GIFT  OF 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 
THE  MAKING  OF  TO-MORROW 


The  Validity  of 
American  Ideals 


By 
SHAILER  MATHEWS 

Dean  of  the  Divinity  School,  the  University  of  Chicago 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
SHAILfiR  MATHEWS 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

INTRODUCTION 7 

PREFACE 9 

LBCTUBE 

I.  THE  TEST  OF  IDEALS 13 

II.  THE  FREE  INDIVIDUAL 42 

III.  DEMOCRACY 93 

IV.  THE  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION 123 

V.  COOPERATIVE  SOVEREIGNTY 150 

VI.  AMERICANISM  AS  AN  IDEAL ,         .  176 


1 4 


INTRODUCTION 

GEORGE  SLOCUM  BENNETT,,  a  graduate  of 
Wesleyan  University  in  the  class  of  1864, 
showed  his  lifelong  interest  in  the  training 
of  youth  for  the  privileges  and  duties  of 
citizenship  by  long  periods  of  service  as  a 
member  of  the  Board  of  Education  of  his 
home  city,  and  as  member  of  the  boards  of 
trustees  of  Wyoming  Seminary  and  Wes 
leyan  University. 

It  was  fitting,  therefore,  that,  when  the 
gifts  made  by  himself  and  family  to  Wes 
leyan  University  were  combined  to  form  a 
fund  whose  income  should  be  used  "in  de 
fraying  the  expenses  of  providing  for  visit 
ing  lecturers,  preachers,  and  other  speakers 
supplemental  to  the  college  faculty,"  it 
should  have  been  decided  that  the  primary 
purpose  should  be  to  provide  each  year  a 
course  of  lectures,  by  a  distinguished 
speaker,  "for  the  promotion  of  a  better  un 
derstanding  of  national  problems  and  of  a 
more  perfect  realization  of  the  responsibili 
ties  of  citizenship,"  and  to  provide  for  the 
publication  of  such  lectures  so  that  they 

7 


8  INTRODUCTION 

might  reach  a  larger  public  than  the  audi 
ence  to  which  they  should,  in  the  first  in 
stance,  be  addressed. 

To  give  the  third  course  of  lectures  on  this 
Foundation,  the  joint  committee  for  its  ad 
ministration  appointed  by  the  board  of  trus 
tees  and  by  the  faculty,  selected  Shailer 
Mathews,  Dean  of  the  Divinity  School  in  the 
University  of  Chicago.  The  varied  and  bril 
liant  career  of  this  teacher,  administrator, 
editor,  author,  and  lecturer,  has  brought  him 
into  contact  with  the  people  of  almost  every 
part  of  this  country.  His  extensive  studies 
in  the  fields  of  religion,  history,  economics, 
and  sociology  have  peculiarly  fitted  him  for 
the  task  of  correlating  and  interpreting  his 
impressions  of  American  life  and  character 
in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  out  the  real  signifi 
cance  of  those  national  ideals  which  have 
become  a  part  of  the  American  tradition, 
and  in  which  we  are  accustomed  to  find  the 
justification  for  our  type  of  democracy. 

WILLIAM  ARNOLD  SHANKLIN. 

DAVID  GEORGE  DOWNEY. 

ALBERT  WHEELER  JOHNSTON. 

HENRY  MERRITT  WRISTON. 

FRANK  EDGAR  FARLEY. 


PREFACE 

ANY  brief  discussion  of  the  history  and 
significance  of  America  is  exposed  to  the 
danger  of  falling  into  theoretical  criticism 
or  nebulous  generalization.  I  am  not  sure 
that  I  have  escaped  either  danger.  The 
validity  of  American  ideals  deserves  a  much 
fuller  treatment  than  these  lectures  permit. 

Yet  I  feel  that  an  understanding  of  the 
constructive  ideals  of  our  nation  is  indispen 
sable  to  an  intelligent  citizenship.  Espe 
cially  in  an  age  like  ours,  which  is  suffering 
from  the  chaotic  conditions  that  have  always 
followed  great  wars,  is  there  need  to  see 
American  life  in  its  perspective  and  to  real 
ize  its  inner  spiritual  forces. 

There  is  no  lack  of  men  who  are  eager  to 
point  out  the  shortcomings  of  America. 
There  are  all  too  many  who  can  see  in  our 
social  order  only  an  opportunity  for  arousing 
the  spirit  of  conflict  which  a  war  demands  for 
its  success.  But  the  psychology  of  peace  is 
radically  different  from  that  of  war.  While 
we  are  fighting  even  for  the  noblest  ideals 
our  unity  must  rest  largely  upon  a  common 
enmity.  But  in  times  of  peace  we  must  aban- 

9 


10  PREFACE 

don  hatred  as  a  basis  of  social  unity  unless 
we  can  perform  the  almost  miraculous  feat 
of  making  it  serve  as  a  basis  of  united  as 
sault  upon  social  injustice  and  other  evils 
which  are  a  part  of  our  human  lot. 

A  nation  in  peace  has  seldom  been  able  to 
utilize  the  attitudes  developed  in  war.  Even 
the  common  hatred  which  has  united  us  in 
the  face  of  an  enemy  becomes  a  source  of  in 
ternal  misunderstandings  and  conflicts. 
Now  that  we  have  ceased  to  fight,  we  must 
learn  to  cooperate.  The  position  of  our  na 
tion  as  the  final  arbiter  in  the  great  war  is 
being  duplicated  in  the  more  difficult  field  of 
the  reestablishment  of  civilization  and  the 
making  of  a  better  world.  The  problem  of 
the  citizen  is  more  complicated  and  difficult 
than  that  of  a  soldier. 

In  these  lectures  I  have  tried  to  help  the 
generation  that  bore  the  brunt  of  the  war  to 
take  up  the  course  of  development  inter 
rupted  by  that  great  tragedy.  If,  despite 
the  obvious  insufficiency  of  presentation,  I 
have  in  any  way  succeeded  in  my  effort,  I 
shall  feel  that  I  have  to  some  degree  fulfilled 
the  purposes  of  the  founders  of  the  lecture 
ship  under  whose  auspices  I  spoke. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY 


GEORGE  SLOCUM  BENNETT  FOUNDATION 


LECTURES 

For  the  Promotion  of  a  Better  Un 
derstanding  of  National  Problems 
and  of  a  More  Perfect  Realization 
of  the  Responsibilities  of  Citizenship. 


THIRD  SERIES— 1920-21 


LECTURE  I 
THE  TEST  OF  IDEALS 

AN  ideal  is  a  working  hypothesis  of  better 
ment.  Its  validity  is  a  question  of  morals, 
to  be  established  by  its  ability  to  draw  men 
toward  itself.  In  morals  abstract  tests  are 
worthless.  An  ideal  with  only  theoretical 
beauty  is  a  bit  of  social  algebra.  We  are  all 
tempted  to  drift  off  into  such  algebra  when 
ever  we  discuss  social  affairs.  Accustomed 
as  we  are  in  mathematics  to  arrive  at  exact 
proof  by  the  elimination  of  concrete  real 
ities,  we  almost  instinctively  adopt  the  same 
method  in  dealing  with  human  affairs.  But 
even  in  algebra  a  formula  is  true  only  accord 
ing  to  what  its  letters  represent.  We  say 
complacently  x  +  y  =  %.  But  if  x  —  a  Bol 
shevist  and  ?/  —  a  capitalist,  how  shall  we 
describe  2?  Similarly  in  the  discussion  of 
social  ideals.  Innumerable  discussions  make 
the  word  "democracy"  a  sort  of  intellectual 
x  which  can  be  thrown  into  various  combi 
nations,  each  like  itself  a  disembodied  reality. 
We  forget  that  a  society  is  really  composed 
13 


14  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

of  folks  with  their  passions  and  prejudices 
and  ambitions.  The  validity  of  an  ideal  un 
der  such  conditions  cannot  be  determined 
until  we  consider  the  actual  forces  which 
gave  it  birth  and  with  which  it  is  concerned. 
An  ideal  in  one  society  might  be  reaction  in 
another. 

Failure  to  realize  this  commonplace  truth 
lies  beneath  much  of  the  discontent  of  well- 
meaning  persons  who  cannot  understand 
why  their  description  of  an  ideal  is  so  far  out 
of  line  with  actual  affairs.  A  radical  in 
variably  neglects  the  human  element.  He 
wants  things  done  immediately.  He  is  im 
patient  with  process.  Once  having  con 
vinced  himself  that  a  proposal  is  good  in  it 
self  he  wants  everybody  to  adopt  it  at  once. 
Yet  to  urge  ideals  while  oblivious  to  folks 
and  folk-ways  may  be  as  fatal  as  it  would  be 
to  give  water  in  unlimited  quantities  to  a 
man  dying  from  thirst. 

The  validity  of  an  ideal  can  be  judged  by 
two  standards — its  origin  and  its  effects. 
Negatively  such  judgment  is  easy.  If  it 
springs  from  socially  repudiated  motives, 
reaction,  and  willful  disregard  of  contem 
porary  human  rights ;  if  it  is  so  inapplicable 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  15 

to  a  given  social  order  as  to  produce  social 
anarchy,  selfishness,  and  disregard  of  per 
sonal  rights,  an  ideal  is  invalid.  Such  origins 
we  often  find  proposed  as  the  justification 
of  the  actions  of  privileged  classes  in  periods 
of  reaction  like  that  of  the  post-Napoleonic 
era,  and  as  the  support  of  demagogues  and 
terrorists  in  almost  every  revolution.  Posi 
tively,  however,  valuation  of  an  ideal  is  not 
so  easy.  Yet  if  an  ideal  originates  in  de 
sires  to  improve  the  best  conditions  known 
to  its  champions,  in  forward-reaching  reli 
gions  and  governments,  in  intelligence  and 
strong  personalities ;  if  with  full  recognition 
of  the  achievements  and  actual  possibilities 
of  conditions  to  which  it  is  applied,  it  makes 
toward  wider  opportunity  for  giving  as  well 
as  getting  justice,  and  is  capable  of  effective 
embodiment  in  social  institutions,  it  certainly 
has  every  reason  for  being  judged  valid. 
And  unless  social  conditions  have  radically 
changed,  its  efficiency  in  the  past  warrants 
hope  for  its  validity  in  the  future. 

All  this  is  particularly  true  when  we  speak 
about  national  ideals.  It  is  not  uncommon 
to  find  political  philosoph'ers  and  literary  re 
formers  setting  forth  contrasting  pictures 


16  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

of  America  as  it  is  and  as  it  ought  to  be. 
Having  organized  an  ideal  in  disregard  of 
the  citizens  who  must  express  it,  they  at  once 
grow  discouraged  because  they  see  such  a 
difference  between  it  and  the  realities  of 
American  life.  A  very  considerable  litera 
ture  of  this  sort  is  at  your  disposal.  But  you 
cannot  judge  a  nation  so  easily.  Our  poets, 
our  philosophers,  our  statesmen,  may  in 
terpret  our  national  life  as  expressing  cer 
tain  ideals  but  such  interpretations  are  by  no 
means  infallible.  Recall,  for  example,  the 
interpretation  given  America  by  De 
Tocqueville.  The  real  ideals  of  America 
are  immanent  within  its  historical  tenden 
cies.  Their  value  is  pragmatically  to  be 
known  in  the  effects  of  the  process  of  na 
tional  growth. 

There  are,  of  course,  abstract  and  phil 
osophical  considerations  with  which  we  may 
properly  estimate  the  validity  of  American 
ideals,  but  they  are  only  secondary.  They  do 
not  furnish  the  ideals.  They  must  not  be 
searched  for  them  any  more  than  you  would 
search  More's  Utopia  for  the  policy  of 
Lloyd  George.  The  only  ideals  with 
which  we  are  now  concerned  are  those 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  17 

which  are  found  by  a  study  of  Amer 
ican  history  and  its  tendencies.  Having 
found  them,  we  shall  have  simultaneously 
discovered  their  validity,  for  they  were  in  the 
social  minds  which  have  made  America.  The 
only  serious  question  remaining  will  be  not 
whether  they  can  be  justified  by  abstract 
ethical  considerations,  but  whether  condi 
tions  have  so  changed  that  the  ideals  which 
have  been  a  part  of  our  history  can  have 
equal  influence  in  the  future. 

I  do  not  pretend  in  these  lectures  to  take 
a  neutral  attitude.  In  an  exclusively  histori 
cal  study  neutrality  is  imperative,  but  when 
it  comes  to  a  valuation  of  one's  own  nation 
one  has  a  right  to  be  swayed  by  the  history  he 
studies.  For  my  part,  I  do  not  dissemble 
pride  in  America  despite  its  faults.  Six 
years  ago  I  found  myself  before  audiences  in 
Japan  endeavoring  to  set  forth  the  real 
meaning  of  American  history.  The  haze  of 
the  Pacific  is  distorting  not  only  when  one 
looks  from  the  West,  but  when  one  looks 
from  the  East.  There  were  few  things,  I 
found,  of  which  we  suspected  the  Japanese, 
of  which  the  Japanese  did  not  suspect  us.  It 
was  an  altogether  new  experience.  In  justi- 


18  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

fication  of  our  own  attitudes  I  was  led  to 
plead  our  international  relations.  Without 
boasting  I  found  it  possible  to  say  things  of 
the  United  States  which  no  other  nation 
could  say  of  itself.  Every  fair-minded  critic 
of  our  country  must  see  them.  When  with 
wider  study  I  have  tried  to  see  the  meaning 
of  developments  in  the  United  States  this 
patriotic  conviction  has  been  deepened.  I 
realize  that  we  have  glaring  faults.  I  have 
too  many  friends  in  other  countries  and  I 
have  read  too  many  discussions  of  America 
to  be  left  in  ignorance  in  this  regard.  I  am 
ready  to  admit  that  we  dislike  to  catalogue 
these  faults,  preferring  to  give  at  least  a 
conventional  respectability  to  questionable 
men  and  deeds — as  an  old  family  not  so  far 
from  Middletown  still  marks  the  empty 
grave  of  one  of  its  members,  "Lost  at  sea," 
although  he  really  was  rescued,  but  failed 
to  report  at  home,  married  a  new  wife,  and 
established  a  new  family  in  distant  New 
Hampshire!  But  the  history  of  America 
is  the  history  of  cautious  pioneering  in  so 
cial  and  political  idealism.  The  American 
patriot  as  he  pleads  for  his  nation  does  not 
need  to  be  a  chauvinist  or  an  apologist;  he 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  19 

needs  simply  to  tell  the  story  of  our  develop 
ment. 

American  history  is  more  than  the  history 
of  people  in  America.  The  annals  of  a  na 
tion  may  be  of  value  as  facts,  but  they  may 
also  be  quite  valueless.  Supposing  that 
some  one  should  discover  the  full  record  of 
the  life  of  an  Esquimau  tribe,  who  ex 
cept  anthropologists,  would  be  interested? 
A  nation  to  have  a  really  significant  history 
must  have  contributed  something  significant 
to  social  evolution.  Other  nations  must  have 
benefited  by  its  experience.  Other  peoples 
must  have  been  taught  by  it  to  avoid  mis 
takes.  Humanity  must  have  found  within 
its  political  and  social  experiments  material 
for  its  betterment.  True,  there  are  peoples 
whose  history  we  must  study  for  other  and 
more  sinister  reasons.  There  have  been  pi 
rate  nations  who  have  left  a  wake  of  blood 
across  history;  contagiously  decadent  na 
tions  who  have  been  the  breeding  spot  of 
moral  weakness  and  death ;  vast  undeveloped 
but  isolated  peoples  whose  wild  awakening 
may  ruin  civilization.  But  America  belongs 
to  none  of  these  classes.  Its  history  is  a  part 
of  the  world  history.  It  has  made  its  con- 


20  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

tribution  to  the  forces  which  have  trans 
formed  human  life.  It  has  never  been  a  pi 
rate  nation ;  and  if  only  it  remains  true  to  its 
ideals,  it  will  never  be  a  decadent  or  an  an 
archic  nation. 


Yet  we  must  face  our  moral  liabilities  if 
only  to  assure  ourselves  that  our  problem 
is  not  merely  rhetorical. 

This  is  a  bad  day  for  idealists.  During  the 
Great  War  we  were  told  that  all  things  were 
to  be  made  new.  It  was  a  rare  virtue  that 
was  not  to  find  itself  embodied  in  the  world 
after  the  war.  Our  young  men  were  to  come 
back  and  remake  the  church,  the  state,  the 
family,  and  even  ourselves.  Those  of  us  who 
knew  something  about  history  and  the  effect 
of  past  wars  upon  human  society  indulged 
in  no  such  millennial  dreams.  It  is  as  diffi 
cult  to  make  a  historian  enthusiastic  as  it  is 
to  make  an  old  man  hopeful.  He  knows  too 
much  about  human  life  and  its  ever-recur 
ring  cycles. 

But  historians  were  comparatively  few, 
and  we  were  all  desperately  engaged  in  help 
ing  carry  forward  a  struggle  for  the  very  life 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  21 

of  existing  society.  Our  hopes  were  nour 
ished  by  oratory,  sacred  and  profane,  and  the 
struggle  of  the  day  was  regarded  as  a  proph 
ecy  of  the  coming  day.  When  the  armistice 
came  and  the  war  closed,  our  optimists  looked 
about  for  justification  of  their  faith.  Their 
search  brought  disappointment  and  lamen 
tation.  Army  life  had  left  the  young  men 
of  America  about  where  it  found  them.  The 
church  had  found  no  uplift,  industry  no 
brotherhood,  politics  no  new  vision.  An 
orgy  of  spending  and  a  frenzied  determina 
tion  to  enjoy  oneself  and  forget  the  war 
deadened  our  consciences.  No  wonder  dis 
illusioned  idealists  grew  cynical! 

It  is  not  difficult,  you  see,  to  point  out  con 
ditions  which  very  properly  bid  us  pause  in 
easy-going  belief  that  idealism  is  regnant  in 
America.  But  we  have  much  farther  to  go 
before  pessimism  is  exhausted.  In  1916  the 
prevailing  voice  of  the  American  people  was 
for  some  sort  of  participation  in  a  League  of 
Nations.  In  1920  we  heard  a  general  revival 
of  the  plans  for  isolation  and  the  demand 
that  America  be  prepared  to  defend  herself 
against  a  world  with  which  she  has  not  under 
taken  to  cooperate. 


22  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  war  has  left  us 
with  a  great  loyalty  to  the  flag  and  a  keen 
sensitiveness  to  our  national  honor.  Our 
critics  admit  that  such  is  the  case,  but  aver 
that  it  is  a  long  way  from  national  honor  to 
national  ideals.  They  point  out  that  at  the 
very  time  when  this  nationalism  has  been  de 
veloping  there  has  been  an  exodus  of  intelli 
gent  foreigners  from  America  back  to  their 
homes.  In  a  recent  number  of  the  Atlantic 
a  writer  reports  that  he  questioned  two  hun 
dred  Norwegians  who  were  on  board  a 
steamer  sailing  to  Norway  and  found  that 
only  about  ten  per  cent  ever  expected  to  re 
turn  to  America.  Inquiry  brought  the  al 
most  universal  reply  that  America  was  all 
right  "except  for  the  people  that  run  it," 
and  that  these  returning  emigrants,  many  of 
whom  were  naturalized  Americans,  had  had 
enough  of  America.  My  own  opinion  is  that 
such  disillusioned  folk  will  soon  be  seeking 
return  passage — for  there  is  nothing  so 
deadly  to  an  immigrant's  homesickness  as  a 
visit  to  his  homeland !  But  none  the  less  this 
disaffection  must  be  counted  among  our  li 
abilities. 

More  serious  are  doubts  as  to  what  we  have 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  23 

been  taught  to  regard  as  our  chief  idealistic 
heritage.  You  will  find  in  many  colleges 
those  "ymmg  intellectuals"  who  insist  that 
American  democracy  is  based  upon  an  out 
grown  philosophy  and  is  to  be  renounced  as 
mid- Victorian.  Individualism,  nationalism, 
and  the  refusal  to  plunge  altruistically  into 
the  maelstrom  of  Irish  independence  and  in 
ternational  socialism,  not  to  say  Bolshevism, 
are  held  by  such  intellectuals  as  evidence  of 
hopelessly  bourgeois  minds.  As  for  indi 
vidualism,  there  are  indeed  few  among  the 
intellectuals  who  would  say  a  word  in  its 
favor.  In  their  eyes  it  has  disappeared  be 
yond  the  iridescent  haze  of  class  conscious 
ness,  never  to  reappear — except  when  some 
class-conscious  person  undertakes  to  cooper 
ate  with  some  other  class-conscious  person! 
Then  it  is  that  the  original  stuff  of  which 
humanity  is  made  reasserts  itself,  for,  para 
doxical  as  it  may  seem,  some  of  the  most  in 
dividualistic  persons  alive  are  those  who 
plead  most  convincingly  for  social  solidarity. 
Back  of  much  of  this  criticism  is  sup 
pressed  jealousy  expressing  itself  in  rhe 
torical  dreams.  A  friend  of  mine  went  to 
Russia  just  after  the  first  revolution.  As  he 


24  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

came  to  the  frontier  he  stepped  up  to  the 
guard  and  extended  to  him  his  felicitations 
for  the  success  of  the  revolution  by  which 
the  Czar  had  been  deposed.  He  happened 
to  have  with  him  a  picture  of  George  Wash 
ington,  and  he  showed  it  to  the  guard.  The 
Russian  looked  at  it  indifferently,  without 
any  of  the  admiration  which  my  friend  had 
supposed  one  republican  should  show  to  the 
father  of  republics.  But  all  the  soldier  re 
marked  was,  "He  looks  like  a  comfortable 
gentleman."  The  full  meaning  of  this  retort 
appeared  later  in  Petrograd  when  my  friend 
asked  a  cab  driver  what  he  meant  by  a  bour 
geois  person.  He  replied,  "Someone  who 
was  comfortable  under  the  old  regime." 
Parlor  socialists  and  revolutionary  intellect 
uals  with  an  income  may  well  give  serious 
thought  to  that  answer  of  a  man  who  was 
not  a  dilettante  revolutionist! 

There  is  in  America  a  growing  number  of 
people  who  hate  those  who  have  been  com 
fortable  and  those  conditions  which  have 
made  for  their  comfort.  They  respond  no 
more  than  would  the  Russian  soldier  to  the 
praise  of  our  democracy.  They  believe  our 
democracy  is  only  another  term  for  a  capital- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  25 

istic  social  order.  They  will  have  none  of  it. 
They  believe  in  socialism  and  communism. 
And  they  are  consistent.  There  is  a  very 
great  difference  between  what  we  call  democ 
racy  and  their  ideals.  The  bitterest  denun 
ciation  of  the  United  States  we  have  heard 
lately  has  come  from  men  of  this  sort.  Kings 
have  disappeared,  but  American  democracy 
has  new  enemies  in  men  and  women  who  be 
lieve  it  is  outgrown. 

Even  among  those  who  are  not  champions 
of  class-consciousness  there  is  the  suspicion 
that  our  institutions,  however  successful  in 
the  past,  are  incompetent  to  direct  the  prog 
ress  of  the  future.  Such  suspicion  is  some 
times  not  frankly  expressed,  but  even  among 
some  good  Americans  sincerely  devoted  to 
forwarding  human  interests  and  welfare, 
there  is  a  frank  avowal  of  doubt  as  to  the  ca 
pacity  of  American  institutions  to  serve  what 
they  regard  as  democracy.  Nor  is  it  difficult 
for  such  critics  to  point  out  the  basis  of  their 
apprehensions.  American  life  is  confessedly 
by  no  means  perfect  and  the  tension  born  of 
the  interplay  of  economic  groups  in  a  vast 
population  scattered  over  an  immense  area 
certainly  grows  no  less.  The  enthusiasm  for 


26  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

liberty  in  the  eighteenth-century  sense  of  the 
word  has  certainly  waned,  and  the  idea  that 
the  best  government  is  one  which  interferes 
least  with  the  individual  citizen  has  been  re 
placed  by  a  prompt  recourse  to  govern 
mental  activity  whenever  crises  emerge.  Po 
litical  forms  which  were  effective  in  a 
sparsely  settled  country  and  a  nonindustrial 
civilization  are  said  to  be  breaking  down 
under  our  present  conditions.  Such  critics 
of  America  do  not  despair  of  their  country, 
but  they  swell  the  number  of  those  who  en 
tertain  the  hope  of  a  radical  change  from  a 
representative  government  chosen  by  indi 
viduals  to  one  of  universal  referendum. 

Nor  are  political  and  economic  conditions 
the  sole  object  of  attack.  With  the  distrust 
of  democracy  as  a  system  of  government, 
goes  a  distrust  of  nearly  everything  that  be 
longs  to  control  set  up  by  the  past.  Good 
ness  is  said  to  be  a  form  of  sham  morality. 
Marriage,  religion,  law,  all  alike  are  treated 
by  one  or  more  groups  of  the  "disillusioned" 
as  debilitating  survivals  which  are  outgrown. 
If  you  venture  a  defense  of  experienced 
idealism,  the  response  of  these  antidemocrats 
is  apt  to  be  increased  vociferation,  the  shrug 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  27 

of  superior  shoulders,  and  the  charge  that 
you  are  bourgeois  and  mid- Victorian.  With 
the  radical  there  is  no  more  awful  anathema! 

II 

Are  these  strictures  upon  American  life 
and  its  ideals  legitimate?  Are  the  ideals 
which  have  characterized  the  past  of  Amer 
ica's  national  life  still  valid?  Are  we  to 
stand  in  terror  of  to-morrow  because  we  have 
outgrown  the  virtues  of  yesterday?  Are  our 
newly  naturalized  citizens  capable  intel 
lectually  of  appropriating  these  ideals  of  the 
fathers?  Have  they  experiences  in  which 
Americanism  can  root  itself?  It  is  to  such 
questions  as  these  that  I  would  direct  your 
attention.  It  may  be  that  to  some  of  you 
they  may  seem  as  academic  as  they  did  to  me 
when  first  I  heard  them  raised  years  ago, 
but  no  such  opinion  can  be  held  by  those  who 
really  study  the  tendencies  in  to-day's  na 
tional  life.  Questions  like  these  cannot  be 
drowned  in  jazz  music.  America  at  the 
present  time  is  passing  through  a  crisis  in 
morality  which  cannot  be  met  wisely  or  ef 
fectively  if  a  generation  indifferently  turns 
from  idealistic  ends,  measures  everything  in 


28  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

terms  of  money,  and  substitutes  amusement 
for  self-control. 

Nor  am  I  thinking  only  of  the  foreign- 
born  among  us.  We  who  constitute  the  pa 
rental  generation  may  very  likely  be  too  con 
cerned  about  the  ways  of  young  people  who 
are  to  follow  us  upon  the  stage  of  American 
history,  but  we  cannot  overlook  the  fact  that 
our  own  youth  was  spent  under  conditions 
our  parents  could  understand.  We  may 
have  been  wayward,  but  we  were  wayward 
within  the  limits  of  American  conventions 
and  political  thinking.  Parents  and  children 
had  a  history  in  common  and  spoke  the  same 
political  language.  We  never  questioned 
America.  But  is  this  as  true  to-day  as  it 
was  a  generation  ago?  Successive  waves  of 
continental  immigration  diluted  our  patri 
otic  inheritance  and  unsettled  our  national 
habits,  and  unless  one's  observation  is  quite 
misleading,  we  need  to  educate  the  rising 
generation  as  well  as  immigrants  in  the  gen 
uine  ideals  of  their  country.  We  cannot 
suffer  them  to  assume  that  one  sort  of  social 
idealism  is  as  good  as  another. 

We  all  need  to  be  Americanized;  we  all 
need  to  guard  against  being  continentalized. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  29 

The  continent  of  Europe  never  has  had  the 
same  political  or  social  history,  experience 
or  ideals  as  England  and  America.  The 
two  divisions  of  European  life  have  always 
found  it  hard  to  understand,  much  less  ap 
preciate,  one  another.  Not  merely  political 
and  economic  rivalry  but  a  different  social 
structure  and  process  have  kept  them  apart. 
To-day  these  two  ancient  opponents  are  ac 
tually  intermingled  in  America.  Their  op 
position  continues.  Continental  political 
and  social  ideals  have  been  and  are  being 
frankly  heralded  as  superior  to  those  devel 
oped  in  America.  To  an  extent  all  but  star 
tling  the  war  found  American  education 
filled  with  this  distrust  of  American  institu 
tions  and  constructive  hopes.  The  validity 
of  our  ideals  must  now  be  defended  not  only 
conventionally  but  aggressively  before  the 
bar  of  a  generation  of  Americans  who  have 
been  subjected  to  the  influences  of  German 
and  Russian  class-idealism.  The  difficulty 
of  one  generation's  being  understood  by  its 
successor  lends  poignancy  to  one's  efforts 
to  share  with  young  men  and  women  our  con 
fidence  in  the  outlook  for  a  genuine  America. 
Having  had  no  share  in  the  production  of 


30  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

the  American  nation,  taking  their  good  for 
tunes  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  patriotism  of 
too  many  students  has  been  darkened  by  the 
criticisms  of  those  who  at  heart  are  cham 
pions  of  ideals,  institutions,  and  a  social  or 
ganization  developed  in  a  different  social 
order.  Let  us  grant,  if  we  must,  that  there 
are  misunderstandings  between  the  genera 
tion  that  caused  the  war  and  the  generation 
that  won  the  war ;  but  let  us  not  concede  that 
American  ideals  are  any  less  valuable  be 
cause  men  died  for  them.  Once  recognized, 
they  will  make  their  own  way;  once  under 
stood,  they  become  the  common  divisor  of 
generations.  And  there  is  no  better  way  to 
make  loyal  Americans  than  to  evoke  spirit 
ual  unity  through  an  understanding  of 
American  ideals  embodied  in  American  his 
tory  and  institutions.  If  we  cannot  "sell" 
American  ideals  to  the  new  millions  in 
America,  we  cannot  hope  to  propagate  them 
by  force.  If  our  ideals  are  not  valid,  the  Re 
public  is  indeed  in  danger.  Revolution  is 
the  invariable  answer  of  one  idealism  to  an 
other  that  stubbornly  persists  after  its  in 
stitutions  have  become  the  privileges  of  its 
champions. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  31 

III 

We  have  said  that  the  validity  of  an  ideal 
must  be  judged  first  by  reference  to  its  ori 
gin.  How  shall  this  test  apply  to  our  own 
ideals?  Did  they  spring  from  materialistic 
ambition,  from  a  longing  for  power?  Or 
did  they  spring  from  the  noblest  experience 
of  their  time?  Are  they  children  of  pride 
and  comfort  or  of  spirituality?  Have  the 
dominants  in  their  pedigree  been  those  of 
conquerors  or  of  martyrs?  The  answer  is 
one  of  facts.  And  facts  are  eloquent.  The 
social  movements  which  gave  birth  to  our 
ideals  were  the  noblest  of  their  day. 

To  appreciate  the  origin  of  American 
ideals  one  must  recall  that  they  are  not  sim 
ply  those  which  can  be  found  in  America. 
Time  would  fail  if  we  were  to  catalogue 
ideals  proposed  and  propagated  on  our  con 
tinent.  Many  of  them  are  fantastic,  some 
of  them  are  foolish,  a  few  of  them  are  dan 
gerous.  Some  of  them  are  the  more  or  less 
illegitimate  and  sterile  progeny  of  genuine 
American  stock.  But  original  American 
ideals  are  developments  of  English  experi 
ence  and  morals.  In  their  earliest  forms 


32  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

they  immigrated  hither  and  grew  up  with 
the  country. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  idealism  of 
the  American  Constitution  was  derived  from 
French  philosophy.  The  opposite  is  more 
nearly  true.  French  philosophy  was  born 
of  English  political  and  social  experience. 
The  French  Revolution  was  inspired  by  the 
American  Revolution.  The  rights  of  men 
were  derived  from  the  rights  of  Congrega- 
tionalists  and  frontiersmen.  They  are  the 
children  of  history,  christened  and  registered 
by  philosophy. 

Anglo-Saxon  idealism  of  the  seventeenth 
century  is  the  parent  of  American  ideals. 
This  historical  fact  is  of  first  importance. 
German  idealism  is  sentimental  and  singu 
larly  divorced  from  political  and  social  in 
stitutions.  French  idealism  becomes  a  pyro 
technic  enthusiasm  giving  rise  to  a  program 
like  that  of  Napoleon  or  a  defense  like  that 
of  Verdun.  But  Anglo-American  idealism 
is  neither  sentimental  nor  a  matter  of  en 
thusiasm.  It  is  matter-of-fact — the  product 
of  social  practice,  often  born  of  tragic  con 
flict  with  privileges  men  have  sought  to  fas 
ten  upon  progress.  Such  restraint  has  al- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  33 

ways  failed.  Just  as  the  rights  of  English 
men  long  ago  became  the  rights  of  foreign 
ers  in  England,  so  have  the  rights  of  Eng 
lishmen  in  America  become  generalized  into 
rights  which  everybody  ought  to  have — the 
rights  of  man. 

Of  course,  our  national  history  has 
abounded  in  impossible  promises  as  to  what 
would  come  to  pass  if  some  party  or  other 
should  win  at  an  election.  But  such  irides 
cent  promises  have  never  been  taken  very 
seriously  by  a  sophisticated  electorate.  A 
political  platform  is  not  a  program.  It  is 
rather  something  upon  which  a  candidate 
may  stand  while  he  is  deciding  which  way  the 
people  at  large  choose  to  go.  This  fact  saves 
even  the  sometimes  Munchausenlike  opti 
mism  of  our  platforms  from  hypocrisy.  For 
the  hope  of  to-day  if  only  it  is  born  of  justice 
has  been  the  forecast  of  the  reality  of  day 
after  to-morrow.  The  people  have  been  re 
lentless  arbiters.  Selfishness  and  quackery 
have  been  sensed  and  discarded  as  an  un 
worthy  ancestry  for  sane  hopes. 

We  have  had  every  now  and  then 
dream-pictures  of  a  better  world  which 
was  to  come  when  certain  theories  and 


34  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

dreams  had  been  realized.  But  they  have 
not  long  endured.  They  did  not  spring 
from  the  common  struggle  for  justice  and 
betterment.  As  the  path  of  the  explorer  is 
strewn  with  impedimenta  abandoned  be 
cause  found  unusable,  is  the  history  of  Amer 
ica  strewn  with  cast-off  ideals  which  have  had 
momentary  attention  but  have  never  se 
riously  been  put  into  life.  Their  origin  has 
been  in  speculation  rather  than  in  group- 
morality  born  of  experience. 

The  validity  of  American  ideals,  I  repeat, 
can  be  established  first  of  all  by  the  fact  that 
they  are  the  legitimate  children  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  history  as  it  has  preserved  and  ex 
tended  human  rights,  both  social  and  indi 
vidual.  They  are  ours  because  their  devel 
opment  has  both  determined  and  been  deter 
mined  by  the  direction  in  which  our  history 
has  proceeded.  Springing  from  practical 
idealism  they  have  made  greater  idealism 
practical.  Not,  of  course,  that  all  our  his 
tory  is  idealistic,  but  this  at  least  is  true:  if 
you  sight  across  the  two  centuries  or  more 
during  which  America  has  actually  been  in 
the  process  of  organization,  you  can  discover 
that  despite  variations  in  pace,  despite  strug- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  35 

gles  and  even  civil  war,  there  are  certain  out 
standing  tendencies  toward  larger  personal 
values  in  our  national  life.  It  is  they  which 
give  character  to  American  history.  They 
are  not  superimposed  upon  American  life. 
They  did  not,  full-grown,  antedate  Amer 
ican  institutions  in  the  sense  that  they  were 
simply  appropriated  by  America  as  Japan 
has  appropriated  western  culture.  They  are 
developed  expressions  of  germinant  hopes 
and  faiths  that  gave  our  history  inner  self- 
direction.  They  were  born  not  of  dreams 
but  of  experience.  They  are  the  outgrowth 
not  of  self  complacency,  but  of  the  highest 
spiritual  loyalties,  joined  with  experience  in 
making  the  good  of  to-morrow  spring  from 
the  best  of  to-day. 

In  the  second  place,  our  ideals  are  valid 
because  they  sprang  from  the  practical  ex 
perience  of  religious  groups  seeking  political 
liberty. 

I  make  no  apology  for  such  a  recognition 
of  the  worth  of  religion.  If  one  puts  one's 
self  at  the  beginning  of  our  American  his 
tory,  say  about  1600,  he  will  see  plainly  that 
among  the  germinal  forces  which  went  to 
produce  our  modern  world  was  the  rise  of 


36  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

religious  liberty.  I  am  aware  that  an  effort 
is  now  being  made  to  minimize  the  impor 
tance  of  this  religious  element  in  our  origins 
in  favor  of  an  emphasis  upon  economic  life. 
And  certainly  economic  motives  were  not 
strangers  to  the  men  who  organized  the  Vir 
ginia  Company  and  its  fellows.  Far  be  it 
from  the  historian  to  undervalue  the  role 
which  codfish  and  fur-bearing  animals,  to 
bacco  and  pines  played  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  Pilgrims  and  the  Puritans, 
as  truly  as  the  Frenchmen,  were  not  above 
such  unspiritual  goods.  But  to  think  of  the 
colonists  of  New  England  as  primarily  or 
predominantly  exploiters  of  virgin  resources 
is  to  confuse  the  Adventurers  who  stayed  at 
home  and  waited  for  their  ships  to  come  in, 
with  those  strong  souls  who  undertook  to 
found  new  states  where  they  might  follow 
their  conscience  and  worship  their  God,  as 
well  as  make  their  living.  It  is  true  that 
these  pioneers  may  have  been  embryo  cap 
italists,  but  their  institutions  and  ideals  were 
more  than  those  of  money  makers.  Any  at 
tempt  to  separate  economic,  political  and  re 
ligious  forces  in  the  history  of  colonial  Amer 
ica  will  lead  to  misinterpretation  of  facts. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  37 

Historically  the  American  colonies  are  the 
children  of  economic  distress,  political  unrest 
and  Protestantism.    Not  one  of  them,  with 
the  exception  of  Maryland,  is  the  product  of 
any  other  phase  of  life.    Each  of  the  thirteen 
colonies  had  its  independent  history,  but 
their  pre-national  life  was  rooted   in  the 
search  of  religious  minorities  to  find  scope 
and  liberty  for  the  exercise  of  their  religious 
principles.    In  this  American  colonies  par 
took  of  the  general  character  of  Protestant 
ism  as  something  more  than  a  religious  move 
ment.     The  great  activity  of  the  sixteenth 
century  can  only  be  described  as  a  social 
revolution.    In  the  new  states  which,  follow 
ing  the  decline  of  feudalism,  were  formed 
throughout  Europe,  the  rise  of  cities  and 
monarchies,  the  new  learning,  the  discovery 
of  new  national  wealth  with  the  consequent 
dislocation  of  prices  were  all  as  truly  impor 
tant  as  were  those  religious  motives  to  which 
the  student  of  the  Reformation  so  generally 
gives  his  attention.     Protestantism  in  the 
sense  of  anti-Catholicism  was  a  religious 
phase  of  a  great  social  and  political  move 
ment.     It  was  not  originally  interested  in 
abstract  liberty  or  in  granting  concrete  lib- 


38  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

erties  to  others.  Its  mind  was  set  on  self- 
determination,  and  the  right  of  each  political 
unit  to  establish  its  own  national  or  muni 
cipal  church.  Just  as  in  the  social  and  po 
litical  revolution  which  we  call  the  Reforma 
tion  there  emerged  a  group  of  independent 
monarchies  and  sovereign  states,  did  there 
emerge  also  the  national  churches.  Democ 
racy  was  either  undreamed  or  perverted  into 
fanaticism.  None  of  the  great  reformers 
seem  ever  to  have  questioned  the  right  of  the 
state  to  fix  orthodoxy.  There  was  hardly 
more  liberty  for  non-conformists  in  the  sev 
enteenth  century  than  there  was  for  the 
Arians  in  the  fourth  century. 

In  this  simple  fact  lies  the  explanation  of 
much  of  the  development  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  For,  as  in  their  search  for  self- 
determination,  the  national  churches  split  off 
from  the  imperial  Church  of  Rome,  various 
groups  of  Independents  split  off  from  the 
national  churches.  With  few  exceptions,  the 
colonies  were  largely  organized  by  such  peo 
ple.  They  sought  religious  liberty  and 
wished  to  escape  state  churches.  In  particu 
lar  the  northern  American  colonies  were  the 
product  of  a  new  spirit  in  England  which  re- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  39 

fused  to  conform  to  the  established  church 
whether  that  was  Episcopal  or  Presbyterian. 
The  English  colonies  of  the  north  and  many 
of  the  French  and  German  colonies  further 
south  were  founded  by  groups  who  had  been 
oppressed  and  who  were  here  in  search  of 
liberty.  Similarly  in  the  eighteenth  century 
the  large  migration  of  the  Presbyterians 
from  the  north  of  Ireland  was  a  search  for 
liberty  as  well  as  a  new  home.  The  impor 
tance  of  the  Irish  Presbyterians  in  the  Revo 
lutionary  War  can  hardly  be  overestimated. 
They  made  victory  possible. 

But  the  idea  of  religious  liberty  as  such 
was  not  transferred.  There  was  no  religious 
liberty  to  be  transferred.  It  had  to  be 
evolved.  When  the  Stuarts  fell  the  migra 
tion  of  Puritans  to  Massachusetts  Bay  all 
but  ceased.  The  religious  liberty  at  home 
made  the  transatlantic  liberty  unalluring. 
With  the  possible  exception  of  little  Plym 
outh  and  the  first  settlement  in  Maryland, 
not  one  of  the  original  colonies  had  at  the 
start  any  idea  of  religious  liberty  in  the  ab 
stract.  Religious  liberty  was  born  of  the 
exigency  of  the  situation,  in  which  various 
self-determining  groups  found  themselves 


40  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

unable  to  exclude  dissenters  from  citizenship. 
The  history  of  early  New  England  was  a 
short-lived  epitome  of  the  history  of  contem 
porary  England.  Rhode  Island,  the  first 
colony  in  which  complete  religious  liberty 
was  set  forth,  was  the  small  child  of  a  pro 
testing  minority  of  Massachusetts.  But  un 
planned  and  it  may  be  undesired,  religious 
liberty  came  out  from  the  religious  life  of 
America;  and  liberty  in  one  aspect  of  social 
life  is  bound  to  affect  all  phases.  Faith  in  a 
Sovereign  God  in  heaven  and  on  earth  gov 
ernment  through  town-meetings  lie  behind 
American  liberties  of  all  sorts.  But  the  be 
lief  in  a  Sovereign  God  was  first.  A  theoc 
racy  became  a  republic  because  a  theocracy 
was  found  to  be  impracticable. 

This  religious  parentage,  this  birth  from 
the  very  highest  range  of  ideals  which  Euro 
pean  life  had  reached,  is  one  guaranty  of  the 
validity  of  our  fundamental  American  ideal 
— the  world  of  the  free  individual.  Far  more 
than  even  Switzerland  or  Holland  did  the 
Anglo-American  colonies  contribute  to  the 
world  this  ideal  of  self-government  born  of 
religion,  nourished  in  the  church  and  des 
tined  to  evangelize  political  experience. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  41 

IV 

The  other  test  of  the  validity  of  ideals  is 
pragmatic,  the  testimony  of  history  itself. 
American  ideals  were  not  thought  out.  They 
were  lived  out.  They  sprang  from  hopes 
and  were  constantly  given  opportunity  for 
practical  testing.  They  are  improvements 
on  experience  suggested  by  experience.  If 
one  looks  at  the  history  of  these  hopes  as  a 
phase  of  our  national  experience,  you  can 
see  that  they  involve  four  fundamental 
ideals.  First,  a  society  composed  of  free  and 
equal  individuals;  second,  democracy  as  an 
actual  way  of  free  individuals  living  together 
in  equality  and  in  peace ;  third,  a  written  con 
stitution  embodying  the  principles  of  such 
democracy;  fourth,  cooperative  sovereignty. 
We  shall  now  estimate  their  validity  by  ex 
amining  their  evolution  and  their  effect. 


42  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

LECTURE  II 
THE  FREE  INDIVIDUAL 

"Ir  I  had  to  be  born  again,  as  I  was  born, 
of  a  family  that  had  no  influence  worth  any 
thing,  no  money,  no  lineage — if  I  had  to 
make  my  way  again,  as  I  had  to,  against  dif 
ficulties  such  that  at  the  age  of  twenty-five 
all  that  I  possessed  was  a  hundred  dollars  of 
debts — well,  in  spite  of  all  temptations  to 
belong  to  other  nations,  I  should  have  felt 
that  there  was  only  one  place  for  a  young 
man  who  wanted  to  tear  from  life  full  value 
for  his  efforts ;  in  spite  of  all  temptations  I 
should  have  been  born  an  American."  So 
says  W.  L.  George,  an  Englishman. 

Some  time  ago  I  asked  a  man  who  has  won 
distinction  in  his  chosen  field  of  life,  what  in 
his  opinion  was  the  basis  of  his  patriotism. 
He  immediately  replied:  "Appreciation  for 
a  country  that  could  permit  me,  a  poor"  boy, 
to  realize  some  of  the  ambitions  of  life." 
Such  an  answer  could  be  made  by  thousands 
and  millions  of  Americans.  Mary  Antin 
has  made  it  with  a  beauty  and  passion  which 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  43 

almost  shame  our  more  critical  self -estimate. 
Edward  Bok  has  made  it  in  his  interesting 
autobiography,  The  Americanization  of  Ed 
ward  Bok.  All  such  answers  express  the 
fundamental  American  ideal,  namely,  the 
free  individual  and  his  right  to  enjoy  such 
opportunities  and  to  meet  such  social  obli 
gations  as  he  may  face.  Until  1917  it  was 
not  uncommon  to  see  men  smile  over  the 
eighteenth-century  ideal  that  "all  men  are 
created  free  and  equal."  It  availed  nothing 
to  show  them  that  Jefferson  was  a  man  alto 
gether  too  well  versed  in  human  nature  to 
mean  by  equality  identity  of  capacity,  or  that 
he  would  have  been  the  last  man  to  say  if 
men  are  brothers  they  are  therefore  twins. 
The  Great  War  brought  us  a  better  under 
standing  of  the  meaning  of  liberty  and  of 
person.  Even  the  prostitution  of  "personal 
liberty"  to  a  meaning  little  more  than  man's 
right  to  get  drunk  when  he  pleases  and  of  a 
theatrical  manager  to  put  on  actors  and  ac 
tresses  with  as  little  clothing  as  he  pleases, 
has  not  destroyed  the  new  pride  with  which 
we  read  the  great  sentence  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.  For  the  United  States 
has  been  a  land  of  opportunity  for  the  indi- 


44  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

vidual.  It  has  developed  individualism,  and 
individualism  rather  than  social  classes  is  its 
fundamental  ideal.  Its  goal  is  the  welfare 
of  the  individual  and  not  of  any  social  class. 
I  do  not  need  to  remind  you  that  the  va 
lidity  of  this  ideal,  above  all  others,  has  been 
questioned.  Especially  have  we  been  assured 
by  Socialists  and  semi- Socialists  that  society 
is  the  supreme  end  to  which  we  all  must  yield, 
that  individualism  means  competition  and 
competition  means  capitalism  and  capitalism 
means  wage-slavery.  And,  in  truth,  if  such 
an  indictment  of  individualism  were  correct, 
we  might  well  feel  that  our  country  was  mis 
taken  in  making  it  central  among  its  driving 
motives.  But  the  validity  of  the  ideal  is  not 
to  be  judged  by  a  priori  assumptions  but  by 
the  general  course  of  the  history  within  which 
it  has  operated.  Yet  a  priori  tests  are 
not  lacking.  There  can  be  no  question  that 
either  an  individual  is  worth  something  or 
life  is  worth  nothing.  To  think  that  value 
less  individuals  can  combine  to  make  an  in 
valuable  society  is  a  good  deal  like  saying 
that  one  can  make  a  million  by  adding  ci 
phers.  The  only  thing  which  makes  society 
worth  anything  is  that  it  conduces  to  the 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  45 

welfare  of  its  constituent  members.  If  their 
welfare  is  nonexistent,  it  is  sheer  German 
Kultur  to  talk  about  the  value  of  a  state. 


Elementary  Americanism  is  the  denial  of 
class  structure  in  the  state.  Its  validity  does 
not  rest  upon  a  priori  considerations.  You 
can  trace  the  development  of  the  ever-grow 
ing  recognition  of  the  individual  as  the 
genius  of  its  history. 

How,  then,  did  it  arise?  It  certainly  was 
not  present  in  the  England  of  the  Stuarts. 
But  English  class  distinctions  did  not  cross 
the  Atlantic.  Neither  kings,  clergy,  nor 
nobles  have  been  colonists.  The  Atlantic 
was  a  nonconductor  of  class  consciousness. 
It  was  men  of  the  middle  class,  chafing 
under  the  pressure  of  a  social  order,  who 
dared  to  cross  the  Atlantic.  An  adventurer 
is  bound  to  be  an  individualist,  else  he  would 
not  be  an  adventurer.  The  men  and  women 
who  left  England  were  those  who  wanted 
liberty,  and  liberty  to  Englishmen  is  a 
synonym  of  individualism. 

The  social  stratification  of  England  in  the 
seventeenth  century  forbade  equality  of  op- 


46  THE  VALIDITY  OP 

portunity.  Various  feudal  survivals  still 
abounded.  The  rights  of  Englishmen  were 
not  equally  extensive.  The  farm  worker  had 
no  equality  of  opportunity  with  the  lord  of 
the  manor;  the  Catholic  and  Independent 
did  not  have  the  rights  of  the  member  of  the 
state  church.  A  recollection  of  this  inequal 
ity,  which  was  less  marked  in  England  than 
on  the  Continent,  must  have  formed  the 
background  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence.  When  the  period  of  English  mi 
gration  set  in,  members  of  the  great  middle 
class,  and  they  alone,  settled  in  America. 
Differences  in  wealth  were  not  sufficiently 
great  to  lay  the  foundation  for  a  new  class 
spirit.  It  is  true  that  the  Puritans  of  Massa 
chusetts  when  compared  with  the  Pilgrims  of 
Plymouth  seem  aristocratic,  but  the  dis 
tinction  is  rhetorical  rather  than  actual. 
While  there  were  indentured  servants  in 
more  than  one  colony,  there  was  nothing  of 
genuine  class  spirit  in  the  New  World,  and 
these  servants  soon  took  up  land  and  be 
came  citizens.  In  Virginia  there  was  a  some 
what  different  structure  of  society  than  in 
New  England,  but  even  there  the  "first 
families"  were  not  titled  and  the  small 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  47 

farmers  on  the  west  of  the  colony  were  soon 
to  show  that  they  had  political  power.  In 
all  the  colonies  there  was  opportunity  for 
each  man  to  move  straight  forward  into  in 
dependence  ;  on  the  farm  which  he  carved  out 
from  forests  he  was  proud  of  the  rights 
which  he  enjoyed  as  an  Englishman  and  a 
citizen. 

It  is  worth  noticing  that  this  new  indi 
vidualism  involving  equal  rights  and  obliga 
tions  approved  itself  to  men  who  at  the  start 
undertook  an  approach  to  community  life. 
At  Plymouth  the  Planters,  as  the  settlers 
under  the  various  companies  of  Adventurers 
were  called,  agreed  to  hold  land  in  common. 
Sometimes  this  has  been  spoken  of  as  an  at 
tempt  at  communism,  but  incorrectly.  It 
was,  rather,  a  case  of  postponing  the  dis 
tribution  of  the  profits  of  the  company. 
Land  was  to  be  held  without  distribution  for 
a  number  of  years  and  then  the  various 
shareholders  in  the  company,  among  them 
the  colonists,  were  to  divide  the  outcome  of 
their  industry  and  investment.  But  this 
plan  soon  proved  to  be  unworkable,  even  in 
a  community  like  that  of  Plymouth.  Those 
who  were  industrious  found  themselves  com- 


48  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

pelled  to  work  for  the  inefficient  and  lazy, 
and  soon  demanded  that  the  division  of  the 
land  should  be  immediate  rather  than  post 
poned.  The  individual  had  triumphed  over 
the  Company. 

Within  the  colonies  of  New  England  the 
rights  which  the  members  of  the  colony  pos 
sessed  practically  were  soon  given  theoreti 
cal  confirmation.  This  was  born,  not  of 
philosophy  but  of  historical  situations.  The 
town  meeting  and  the  Congregational 
churches  expressed  phases  of  the  same  social 
mind.  In  the  churches  the  congregation  had 
the  right  of  voting,  and  this  right  of  par 
ticipation  in  administration  was  also  exer 
cised  in  the  town  meeting.  It  was  at  first 
natural  that  the  citizens  should  be  yeomen 
who  were  church  members,  but  this  early 
limitation  of  suffrage  was  soon  found  to  be 
impracticable  and  the  non-church  member 
was  admitted  to  full  rights  of  citizenship. 
The  religious  justification  of  such  equality, 
however,  persisted.  The  rights  of  the  colo 
nists  came  to  be  thought  of  as  the  rights  of 
men,  granted  by  a  Sovereign  God.  If  Pro 
fessor  Jellinek  is  to  be  trusted,  the  natural 
rights  of  the  French  philosophers,  or  at  least 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  49 

the  Declaration  of  Rights  made  by  the 
French  constitutions,  are  to  be  traced  back 
to  similar  declarations  to  be  found  in  these 
early  Congregational  states.  Thus  in  New 
England  the  two  currents  of  development  of 
English  individualism  met.  The  church  and 
the  town  meeting  became  the  foundation 
stones  of  American  conception  of  individual 
equality. 

Geography  still  furthered  the  develop 
ment  of  the  individual.  I  said  just  now  that 
the  path  of  opportunity  lay  forward  for  each 
colonist.  It  ran  westward.  Beyond  the  coast 
there  lay  the  forests  where  any  man  could 
build  his  home.  The  colonists  were  essen 
tially  farmers  and  fishermen.  The  stores  of 
iron  and  coal  which  were  later  to  compel  the 
segregation  of  workers  lay  undiscovered  in 
the  mountains.  Because  of  climate  and  other 
physical  conditions  the  colonists  were  forced 
to  specialize  in  their  agriculture,  and  this  led 
to  conditions  which  were  to  have  vast  influ 
ence  on  the  course  of  American  life.  In  the 
South  the  most  profitable  crops  were  tobacco 
and  rice.  Both  of  these  were  more  profit 
ably  raised  in  large  plantations  than  in  small 
farms.  In  the  North,  and  especially  in  New 


50  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

England,  however,  the  chief  agricultural 
product  was  foodstuff.  Grain  and  root 
crops  are  possible  on  small  land  holdings, 
and  so  the  northern  section  became  broken 
up  into  small  farms  where  their  owners  lived. 
This  separation  of  farmers  tended  toward  in 
dependence  and  self-reliance  in  character. 
Frontier  farms  were  tilled  by  their  owners 
and  not  by  slaves. 

As  the  number  of  colonists  increased,  this 
extension  from  the  tidewater  toward  the 
West  became  ever  greater  and  the  frontier 
began  to  exert  an  influence  hard  to  over 
estimate.  In  fact,  in  no  small  degree  Amer 
ican  individualism  is  the  child  of  the  frontier 
farm.  One  has  only  to  picture  half  a  conti 
nent  covered  with  an  enormous  forest  filled 
with  wild  beasts  and  Indians,  to  realize  how 
severe  must  have  been  the  testing  of  the  men 
and  women  who  pushed  forward  the  wave  of 
white  settlements  and  farms.  Along  this 
frontier  as  it  spread  its  concentric  lines  west 
ward  one  will  find  the  development  of  an 
ever-increasing  democratic  spirit  and  at  the 
same  time  many  elements  of  the  new  Amer 
ican  spirit.  Only  those  with  initiative  and 
patience  could  succeed. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  51 

The  individual,  however,  is  something 
more  than  an  economic  unit  of  society.  The 
production  of  material  wealth  is  not  in  itself 
a  sufficient  explanation  of  human  advance. 
Geographical  influences,  which  make  eco 
nomic  variations  inevitable,  are  not  the  sole 
cause  of  social  development.  These  pioneers, 
therefore,  were  something  more  than  pawns 
of  mountains,  forests,  and  rivers.  Forced 
as  they  were  to  desperate  struggle  with  na 
ture,  they  saw  before  them  something  more 
than  crops  and  herds.  They  built  schools 
where  their  children  might  be  prepared  to 
live  as  well  as  to  make  a  living.  If  they  did 
not  produce  great  poets,  they  produced 
great  hopes.  American  men  and  women  had 
interests  which  were  of  the  soul.  Religion 
spread  its  way  from  cabin  to  cabin  and  from 
settlement  to  settlement  in  the  person  of 
itinerant  Baptist,  Methodist,  and  Presby 
terian  preachers.  The  Scotch-Irish  along 
the  frontier  of  Pennsylvania  and  the  small 
farmers  of  Virginia  were  particularly  re 
sponsive  to  this  new  type  of  preaching  which 
heralded  the  worth  of  each  soul.  Revivals 
were  the  approved  type  of  religious  service 
and  served  with  the  elections  as  the  chief 


52  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

bond  to  bring  these  scattered  pioneers  to 
gether.  In  the  very  nature  of  the  case  these 
frontier  people  were  forced  to  be  self-reliant, 
and  distinctions  of  wealth  and  social  classes 
were  impossible.  Men  were  grappling  hand 
to  hand  with  nature,  and  a  strong  arm  and  a 
keen  eye  counted  more  than  gentle  blood. 
While  towns  on  the  seaboard  were  develop 
ing  a  theory  of  individual  equality  from  their 
institutions,  the  frontiersmen  were  making 
this  equality  and  independence  a  national 
leaven. 

These  pioneers  gave  themselves  to  politics. 
They  believed  that  they  were  able  to  govern 
themselves.  When  once  the  second  genera 
tion  had  reached  maturity  they  unhesitat 
ingly  cast  off  the  leadership  of  those  ele 
ments  of  society  which  were  content  to  per 
petuate  conditions  which  they  had  controlled, 
and  elected  members  of  their  own  class  to 
office  and  recast  all  laws  that  seemed  to 
threaten  a  re-establishment  of  social  classes. 

Few  of  them  were  limited  by  their  mem 
bership  in  a  common  economic  adventure. 
Politics,  religion,  education,  and  by  degrees 
philanthropy  and  business  gave  them  a  di 
versity  of  interests.  The  individual  thus  de- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  53 

veloped  as  a  member  of  several  groups  with 
a  constant  tendency  to  a  multiplication  of 
groups  rather  than  a  consolidation  of  in 
terests  in  some  one  association  which  set 
bounds  upon  individual  action.  The  avoca 
tions  of  life  offset  the  vocations  which 
brought  daily  bread,  and,  in  the  midst  of  an 
astonishing  economic  development,  pre 
vented  class-consciousness  and  class-control. 
Thus  actual  forces  and  circumstances,  the 
very  land  itself,  the  absence  of  roads  and 
other  means  of  communication,  were  devel 
oping  among  men  conditions  that  evoked  ex 
panded  ideals  of  freedom  and  equality.  Re 
gard  for  the  individual  became  a  striking 
characteristic  of  American  life.  To  appre 
ciate  it  one  has  only  to  recall  the  course  of 
contemporary  social  development  on  the 
Continent.  There  a  succession  of  terrible 
wars  resulted  in  large  and  small  states  under 
the  control  of  absolute  rulers,  the  oppression 
of  the  peasantry,  the  destruction  of  even 
partial  constitutional  rights  enjoyed  by  sub 
jects,  the  transformation  of  feudal  rights 
and  duties  into  irresponsible  privilege.  It 
was  not  from  philosophers  primarily  but 
from  the  new  spirit  which  was  developing  in 


54  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

America  that  directly  or  indirectly  the  revo 
lutions  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  to 
come.  And  the  justification  of  these  revolu 
tions  was  found  in  the  conception  of  the 
rights  of  the  individual,  of  which  continental 
Europe  knew  nothing,  but  which  had  been 
especially  recognized  and  formulated  by  the 
nation  builders  on  the  North  American  con 
tinent.  It  is  no  wonder  that  America  be 
came  the  haven  of  the  oppressed.  Here 
alone  could  individuals  be  free. 

In  the  original  individualism  of  the  Amer 
ican  people  one  discovers  seriousness  and 
self-control.  It  is  customary  to  call  this 
type  of  mind  Puritan.  Now,  if  there  is  any 
thing  our  young  intellectuals  abhor,  it  is 
Puritanism.  To  them  it  is  the  very  consum 
mation  of  all  that  restrains  what  they  are 
pleased  to  call  creative  self-expression. 
Themselves  possessed  of  no  particular  sense 
of  the  necessity  of  self-restraint  either  in  ac 
tion  or  in  words,  they  see  only  the  less  at 
tractive  elements  in  the  life  of  the  fore 
fathers  of  our  American  republic.  In  their 
minds  to  be  a  Puritan  is  to  be  a  hypocrite. 

It  is  no  accident  that  most  of  these  critics 
of  Puritanism  come  from  continental  stocks. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  55 

In  many  cases  the  young  intellectual  is  of 
some  oppressed  race  in  revolt  against  the  ex 
cessive  restraints  with  which  his    (or  her) 
fathers  had  been  surrounded.  To  such  minds 
a  fair  appreciation  of  the  Puritan  is  all  but 
impossible.     Idealism  with  them  is  essen 
tially  revolutionary.    They  think  only  of  the 
liberty  of  classes — in  particular,  the  prole 
tariat.     The  liberty  into  which  such  immi 
grants  to  America  are  thrust  dissolves  all  re 
gard  for  the  past  and  authority  in  the  pres 
ent.     Neither  they  nor  their  forbears  have 
had  any  share  in  the  long  spiritual  struggle 
from  which  springs  the  American  liberty 
they  have  fled  to  enjoy.     Indeed,  coupled 
with  their  contempt  of  Puritanism  is  a  ha 
tred  of  English  institutions.    To  decry  Puri 
tanism  seems  an  ethnic  duty.    A  glorifica 
tion  of  an  imagined  state  of  freedom  which 
no  race  ever  enjoyed,  least  of  all  that  from 
which  they  have   sprung,   seems   the   only 
means  of  expressing  their  intoxicated  souls. 
If  one  examines  this  new  liberty  for  which 
the  opponents  of  Puritanism  plead,  it  ap 
pears  to  be  a  one-sided  exposition  of  the  in 
dividualism  evolved  by  the  Anglo-Saxon  in 
England  and  America  and  a  rejection  of 


56        THE  VALIDITY  OF 

that  self-control  which  has  made  Anglo-Sax 
ons  capable  of  originating  the  very  liberty 
which  intellectualism  exploits.  A  man  in 
revolt  from  all  restraints  is  not  capable  of 
producing  even  the  class  solidarity  which  he 
praises.  Society  has  never  been  and  never 
will  be  composed  of  anarchists.  Its  very  ex 
istence  depends  on  authority  of  some  sort. 
If  individuals  lack  the  capacity  for  self- 
restraint,  if  they  claim  only  the  right  to  do 
as  they  please  and  gratify  whatever  desires 
may  happen  to  be  dominant  in  their  inner 
being,  an  authority  from  without  is  indis 
pensable.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  individuals 
have  learned  to  distinguish  between  perma 
nent  and  temporary  values  of  life,  if  they 
have  learned  that  there  is  a  difference  be 
tween  evil  and  good,  if  they  have  come  to  see 
that  the  significant  things  of  life  must  often 
involve  the  sacrifice  of  the  less  significant, 
if  they  deliberately  set  themselves  to  subor 
dinate  physical  pleasure  to  the  things  of  the 
spirit,  they  are  the  sort  of  men  and  women 
who  gave  the  world  constitutional  liberty, 
religious  freedom,  and  democracies.  Young 
intellectuals  may  well  rejoice  that  there  have 
been  such  men.  Otherwise  they  would  never 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  57 

enjoy  the  institutions  their  errant  omnis 
cience  belittles. 

The  Puritan  was  of  this  serious  mind.  No 
caricature  drawn  from  Blue  Laws  which 
never  existed  should  be  permitted  to  obscure 
his  real  contributions  to  democratic  develop 
ment.  If  the  colonists  and  first  generation 
of  citizens  of  the  new  United  States  had  been 
devotees  of  clever  phrases  and  creature  com 
forts,  we  should  never  have  had  the  liberties 
we  now  enjoy.  Pleasure-seekers  have  never 
been  the  ancestors  of  great  states.  Intellec 
tual  anarchists,  despisers  of  authority,  evan 
gelists  of  Utopias  whose  chief  substance  is 
riotous  rhetoric,  have  never  done  more  than 
destroy.  They  have  disintegrated  au 
thority,  but  they  have  never  built  states.  Un 
restrained  orators  of  liberty  which  means 
only  license,  they  have  either  been  parasites 
upon  the  political  achievements  of  men  who, 
like  the  Puritans,  soberly  recognize  the  re 
sponsibilities  of  liberty,  or  have  been  creators 
of  reigns  of  terror. 

It  is  difficult  for  the  historian  of  America 
to  keep  his  patience  in  the  presence  of  the 
anti-Puritan  as  he  attributes  the  evils  of  to 
day  to  the  survival  of  Puritan  attitudes.  He 


58  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

knows  the  limitations  of  Puritan  life — its  too 
eager  buffeting  of  the  self  lest  it  weakly  yield 
to  the  enjoyment  of  the  senses,  its  deprecia 
tion  of  beauty,  its  overemphasis  of  other- 
worldliness;  but  he  knows  also  its  idealism, 
its  democratic  instinct,  its  pursuit  of  spiritual 
values,  its  capacity  to  build  self-determining 
states  from  self -ruled  citizens.  While  it 
would  have  none  of  that  self-indulgent  pa 
ganism  which  so  appeals  to  men  and  women 
without  sense  of  social  responsibility,  Puri 
tanism  was  an  enemy  of  asceticism,  the 
champion  of  honest  pleasures  and  education, 
the  founder  of  institutions  that  have  pre 
vented  the  rapid  development  of  wealth  from 
becoming  a  new  feudalism  and  absolutism. 
I  would  not  minimize  the  contributions  of 
many  another  spirit  to  American  life.  Above 
all,  I  would  not  identify  the  American  with 
the  Englishman.  But  this  fact  cannot  be 
denied:  back  of  democracy  stands  the  Puri 
tan  and,  I  had  almost  said,  only  the  Puri 
tan.  Other  men  have  entered  into  his  labors, 
but  he  labored  first. 

It  is  not  for  us  to  reinstate  the  laws  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  or  the  rough-and-ready 
social  life  of  the  frontier ;  but  a  nation  com- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  59 

posed  of  men  and  women  lacking  the  first 
rudiments  of  self-control,  without  sufficient 
insight  to  choose  permanent  rather  than 
ephemeral  goods,  would  be  one  of  moral  de 
bility  and  political  anarchy.  If  our  young  in 
tellectuals  would  undertake  to  emulate  the 
constructive  virtues  of  the  Puritan,  they 
would  be  less  intolerant  of  his  errors.  And 
they  would  be  taken  more  seriously.  For  if 
in  a  search  for  founders  of  a  new  social  order 
the  choice  should  be  forced  between  Puritans 
and  men  and  women  who  prefer  Cabell  to 
Thackeray,  Ezra  Pound  to  Tennyson, 
Lenin  to  George  Washington,  parlor  so 
cialism  to  representative  government,  affini 
ties  to  homes,  momentary  pleasure  to  thrift, 
and  Nietzsche  to  Jesus  Christ;  men  who 
know  that  building  a  state  is  something  more 
than  writing  pamphlets  and  that  a  constitu 
tion  is  something  more  than  epigrams  and 
vers  Ubre,  will  choose  the  Puritan  with  his 
serious-minded  individualism  rather  than 
the  young  intellectual  with  his  free  spirit. 
For  history  has  proved  his  ideals  valid. 

II 

The  developments  of  the  rights  of  the  in- 


60  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

dividual  did  not  stop  with  the  colonial  and 
early  national  period  of  our  country.  There 
were  still  the  slave  and  the  woman,  neither 
of  whom  fully  enjoyed  the  advantages  of 
the  new  epoch,  and  both  of  whom  have  dur 
ing  the  last  century  been  given  rights  as  per 
sons. 

As  regards  the  slave  we  must  again  recog 
nize  that  geographical  and  economic  forces 
have  been  the  occasion  of  struggles  from 
which  personal  rights  have  emerged.  Here 
again  we  can  see  that  America  has  evolved 
loyalty  to  ideals  under  actual  conditions 
rather  than  through  deductive  analysis  of 
abstract  rights. 

To  appreciate  the  real  significance  of 
slavery  to  individualism  in  America,  it  is 
necessary  to  remember  that  it  passed 
through  a  series  of  stages,  each  more  or  less 
shaped  by  economic  forces.  In  the  eigh 
teenth  century  slavery  was  all  but  universal 
in  the  American  colonies;  one  out  of  every 
fifty  inhabitants  of  Massachusetts,  for  in 
stance,  being  a  slave.  Yet  at  the  time  of  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution  there  was  all 
but  uniform  belief  in  both  North  and  South 
that  slavery  would  ultimately  disappear  be- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  61 

cause  of  the  stopping  of  the  slave  trade.  The 
Quakers  had  characteristically  opposed 
slavery  on  religious  grounds,  although  their 
relatively  small  numbers  had  prevented  their 
having  influence  sufficient  to  abolish  it 
throughout  the  colonies.  But  opposition  to 
the  institution  was  by  no  means  limited  to 
these  earnest  Christians.  In  1780  a  Meth 
odist  Ministers'  Conference  declared  that 
"Slavery  is  contrary  to  the  golden  law  of 
God  and  the  inalienable  rights  of  mankind." 
In  1789  the  Baptist  Association  of  Virginia 
voted  that  "Slavery  is  a  violent  deprivation 
of  the  rights  of  nature  and  inconsistent  with 
representative  government.  We  recommend 
to  our  brethren  to  make  use  of  every  legal 
measure  to  extirpate  this  horrid  evil  from 
the  land."  By  1804  seven  of  the  original 
States  had  abolished  slavery  and  all  thirteen, 
except  South  Carolina,  had  prohibited  the 
slave  trade.  In  the  course  of  a  few  years 
practically  no  slaves  were  held  in  the  North, 
and  the  slave  trade  was  forbidden  under  se 
vere  penalties.  The  political  leaders  of  the 
South  were  not  committed  to  the  system  in 
any  philosophical  way  and  had  voted  to  make 
the  Northwestern  Territory  free  soil.  The 


62  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

slave-holding  group  was  numerically  small 
although  autocratic  in  politics  and  social  life. 

That  slavery  should  become  the  center  of 
sectional  policies  and  a  social  philosophy  was 
due  to  an  unexpected  and  vast  development 
in  capitalism.  The  invention  of  the  cotton 
gin  committed  the  South  to  King  Cotton. 
Instead  of  diversified  farming,  a  one-crop 
system  arose  which  required  practically  no 
skilled  labor.  Sugar  and  rice  became  of 
secondary  importance.  The  tobacco  crop, 
though  still  a  source  of  great  wealth,  was  de 
stroying  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  and  Virginia 
and  the  other  tobacco-raising  States  became 
slave-breeding  States  for  the  benefit  of  those 
where  cotton  could  be  raised. 

This  economic  revolution  was  to  have  pro 
found  effect  upon  the  political  and  social 
theories  of  the  two  sections  of  the  country. 
Manufactories  and  wage-systems  were  un 
known  to  the  South,  and  labor,  instead  of 
being  universal  among  the  whites  as  in  the 
North,  was  largely  limited  to  the  Negro.  In 
the  North  the  development  of  capitalism 
took  the  form  of  industrial  expansion ;  in  the 
South  it  was  wholly  centered  around  the 
labor  of  the  Negro  slave.  Prior  to  1820 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  63 

these  two  interests  had  come  into  more  or 
less  serious  conflict  in  the  embargo  policy 
of  Jefferson  and  the  War  of  1812.  In  1820, 
with  almost  startling  suddenness,  the  conflict 
for  the  maintenance  of  individual  rights  ap 
peared  in  the  struggle  to  maintain  a  balance 
of  power  between  the  two  rival  sections  of 
the  country  in  the  Senate. 

The  land  between  the  Mississippi,  the 
Ohio,  and  the  Atlantic,  which  had  been  ceded 
by  various  States  to  the  Union,  had  been  or 
ganized  in  States  where  the  rights  of  the 
slave  owner  were  undisputed.  The  vast 
Louisiana  territory  purchased  from  Na 
poleon,  except  in  Missouri  unsettled,  had 
been  left  without  designation.  When  Mis 
souri  sought  admission  as  a  State  the  two 
sections  immediately  clashed.  The  North 
ern  States  demanded  that  Missouri  should  be 
a  free  State;  the  Southern  States  demanded 
that  the  existence  of  slavery  already  present 
within  its  limits  should  be  recognized.  For 
a  few  months  the  two  policies  seemed  incapa 
ble  of  agreement.  But  at  last  a  compromise 
was  reached  which  permitted  the  admission 
of  Maine  as  a  free  State  and  Missouri  as  a 
slave  State,  with  the  decision  that  slavery 


64  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

within  its  limits  should  not  extend  north  of 
36:30.  The  compromise  was  epochal  not 
only  in  that  it  permitted  the  extension  of 
slaves  in  the  territory  south  of  36 :30,  and  in 
the  opinion  of  a  majority  of  Congress  recog 
nized  the  right  of  Congress  to  forbid  slavery 
in  the  territories;  but  also  in  the  more 
important  fact  that  while  the  Union  had  been 
saved,  two  economic  systems  and  two  esti 
mates  of  the  worth  of  individuals  had  been 
brought  into  irrepressible  conflict.  From 
1820  the  South  stood  for  a  capitalism  that 
denied  personal  rights  to  the  workman ;  the 
North  for  a  capitalism  that  regarded  work 
men  as  persons.  The  struggle  reached  over 
into  religion.  In  1835  the  Rev.  James 
Smylie  declared  that  slavery  was  good  and 
righteous  according  to  the  Bible.  In  1837 
the  Presbyterian  body  split  over  the  issue, 
to  be  followed  in  1844  by  the  Methodists  and 
in  1845  by  the  Baptists. 

The  year  1850  saw  the  completion  of  the 
economic-social  philosophy  in  the  attitude  of 
the  South.  Slavery,  instead  of  being  re 
garded  as  an  incident  in  the  economic  life, 
served  as  the  basis  of  a  complete  philosophy 
of  society.  The  eighteenth-century  doctrine 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  65 

of  Jefferson  with  its  insistence  that  all  men 
were  created  equal  was  frankly  discarded. 
A  group  of  political  teachers,  chief  among 
whom  were  Thomas  R.  Dew,  of  William  and 
Mary  College,  and  Chancellor  Harper,  of 
South  Carolina,  elaborately  argued  the  ne 
cessity  of  social  classes.  This  new  philoso 
phy  argued  that  civilization  demanded  the 
"forced  labor  of  masses  of  ignorant  people 
whom  to  make  free  would  be  a  social  crime." 
Furthermore,  it  was  claimed  that  the  Bible 
and  the  Christian  Church  sustained  slavery 
as  an  institution.  Chancellor  Harper  stated 
in  1837  that  "the  exclusive  owners  of  prop 
erty  ever  have  been,  ever  will  be,  and  perhaps 
ever  ought  to  be  the  virtual  rulers  of  man 
kind.  ...  It  is  as  much  in  the  order  of  na 
ture  that  men  should  enslave  each  other  as 
that  animals  should  prey  upon  each  other." 
Harper  declared  that  it  was  palpably  untrue 
to  say  that  every  man  was  born  free.  The 
proclivity  of  the  natural  man  is  to  dominate 
or  to  be  subservient,  for  "if  there  are  sordid, 
servile,  and  laborious  offices  to  be  performed, 
is  it  not  better  that  there  should  be  sordid, 
servile,  and  laborious  beings  to  perform 
them  I"  At  the  same  time  Calhoun  openly 


66  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

declared  slavery  to  be  a  blessing.  "Nothing 
can  be  more  unfounded  and  false,"  he  said, 
"than  the  opinion  that  all  men  are  born  free 
and  equal;  inequality  is  indispensable  to 
progress;  government  is  not  the  result  of 
compact,  nor  is  it  safe  to  intrust  the  suffrage 
to  all."  Governor  McDuffie,  in  a  message  to 
the  Legislature  of  South  Carolina,  affirmed 
that  "domestic  slavery  is  the  cornerstone  of 
our  republic  edifice."  The  philosophy  of 
absolute  capitalism  and  class  control  was 
never  more  radically  stated. 

As  the  tide  of  population  moved  west  into 
the  uninhabited  territory,  it  was  inevitable 
that  the  struggle  should  become  intense. 
The  two  types  of  economic  development  as 
represented  by  the  North  and  the  South 
were  incompatible  with  each  other.  Capital 
ism  with  free  labor  did  not  exist  and  could 
not  exist  by  the  side  of  slavery,  and  capital 
ism  with  slavery  could  not  exist  in  the  pres 
ence  of  free  labor.  The  disappearance  of 
the  one  was  necessary  for  the  existence  of 
the  other.  The  bitter  struggle  over  the  Fu 
gitive  Slave  Law  and  the  Kansas  and 
Nebraska  struggle  were  thus  phases  of  a 
conflict  which  was  irrepressible,  not  simply 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  67 

on  moral  grounds,  but  also  because  of  the 
inner  tendencies  of  national  expansion.  The 
social  order  which  controlled  the  vast  area 
west  of  the  Mississippi  was  to  control  the 
nation.  American  democracy  itself  was  at 
stake. 

I  would  not  minimize  the  moral  elements 
of  the  struggle  over  slavery.  But  morality 
is  never  abstract.  It  deals  with  concrete  is 
sues,  individual  rights  and  social  orders.  It 
emerges  from  economic  situations  which  give 
motives  and  evoke  ideals  for  human  rela 
tionships.  There  were  men  in  the  North  who 
argued  the  question  abstractly  and  scrip - 
turally.  But  they  were  agitators  rather  than 
constructive  forces.  The  great  current  of 
moral  convictions  as  to  human  individuality 
was  determined  in  the  conflict  of  two  rival 
social  orders.  The  moral  fervor  of  Garri 
son  and  Channing  became  a  leaven  in  one  of 
these  orders  and  a  center  of  bitterness  in  the 
other.  Slavery,  like  the  saloon,  was  doomed 
by  a  new  social  conscience  because  fatal  to 
individual  rights,  but  its  destruction  came 
only  in  the  destruction  of  an  economic  and 
social  order  of  which  it  had  become  the  nu 
cleus. 


68  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

The  struggle  which  ensued  was  ultimately 
over  individuals  as  such.  The  South  sin 
cerely  believed  in  and  championed  a  social 
structure  which  was  frankly  consistent.  The 
North  was  developing  a  modern  conception 
of  the  capitalistic  system  in  which  wage- 
earners  act  as  free  persons,  both  politically 
and  economically.  The  factory  of  the  North 
was  manufacturing  a  social  theory,  a  moral 
ideal,  and  a  new  individualism,  as  well  as 
cloth.  The  period  of  compromise  gave  time 
for  the  development  of  national  forces,  and 
the  issue  was  determined  by  social  evolution 
fixed  by  moral  idealism  rather  than  by  the 
relative  valor  of  the  two  parties  to  the  terri 
ble  conflict  of  1861-65.  Appomattox  for 
ever  banished  from  America  any  social 
theory  that  denied  personality  to  the  worker. 
The  surrender  of  Lee  meant  the  disappear 
ance  of  capitalistic  absolutism  and  the  tri 
umph  of  the  ideal  of  individual  rights. 

The  world  in  which  we  live  seems  far  re 
moved  from  1865,  but  it  contains  the  ele 
ments  of  a  similar  but  even  greater  struggle. 
The  opposing  forces  are  no  longer  separated 
by  a  river  and  a  surveyor's  line;  they  run 
across  the  social  organization  of  an  entire 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  69 

world.  The  parties  to  the  struggle,  for 
tunately,  are  no  longer  slaves  and  their  mas 
ters.  To  speak  of  to-day's  wage-earner  as  a 
slave  is  to  use  the  rhetoric  of  the  demagogue. 
None  the  less,  superior  as  was  the  wage- 
capitalism  which  became  dominant  in  the 
nineteenth  century  to  the  capitalism  of  the 
slave-owning  class,  it  bequeathed  to  the 
twentieth  century  the  problem  as  to  whether 
labor  is  to  be  treated  as  a  commodity  or  as 
a  personal  contribution  to  the  productive 
process.  That  is  the  great  issue  in  civiliza 
tion.  About  it  the  organized  forces  of  capi 
tal  and  labor  are  at  present  struggling.  In 
its  magnitude  and  elements  it  is  a  new  issue. 
Our  nation  must  therefore  work  out  its  fu 
ture  less  in  accordance  with  precedent  than 
with  tendencies  and  forces  within  the  social 
process  itself.  These  tendencies  come  over 
from  the  immediate  past.  The  evolution  of 
industrial  life  in  the  nineteenth  century  in 
dicates  the  tendency  to  which  we  must  look 
for  the  answer  to  our  present  industrial  prob 
lems.  That  answer  in  brief  is  this :  the  true 
solution  of  industrial  unrest  is  the  recogni 
tion  of  personal  elements  in  the  economic 
processes ;  of  the  wage-earner  as  an  individ- 


70  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

ual.  The  world  of  to-morrow  must  be  a 
better  place  for  men  and  women  to  live  in — 
not  merely  to  grow  rich  in. 

How  these  personal  values  can  be  reached 
will  be  settled  by  the  trial  and  failure  method 
which  the  world  now  employs.  There  will 
be  periods  of  compromise.  There  will  be  at 
tempts  at  radical  reorganization  such  as 
those  proposed  by  socialists,  both  revolution 
ary  and  evolutionary.  Just  what  will  be  the 
precise  outcome  of  these  struggles  we  can 
no  more  tell  than  the  men  of  1820  and  1850 
could  foretell  the  precise  outcome  of  the 
struggle  between  the  economic  and  political 
tendencies  of  the  North  and  South.  But  one 
thing  is  already  certain — America  is  not 
headed  toward  the  philosophy  of  the  South 
ern  statesmen.  It  projects  still  further  the 
advance  from  a  slave  to  the  wage-earner.  It 
will  assure  the  participation  of  the  wage- 
earner  in  the  personal  control  of  his  con 
tribution  to  production.  There  will  be  no 
return  to  autocratic  capitalism.  The  cap 
italism  of  to-day  will  in  its  turn  further  per 
sonal  rights  of  the  individual  lest  it  be  swept 
away  like  that  of  the  slave-holder.  Individu 
alism,  subject  to  new  social  conditions  set  by 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  71 

economic   development,    is    a   synonym    of 
Americanism. 

The  second  evolution  of  personal  rights, 
those  of  women,  has  not  been  so  dramatic  in 
America  as  that  which  ended  slavery,  but  it 
is  none  the  less  significant  of  the  germinal 
power  of  an  ideal.  It  may  be  surprising  that 
the  progress  of  women's  rights  in  America 
has  been  slower  than  in  certain  other  coun 
tries.  Years  before  full  suffrage  was  ex 
tended  to  women  in  the  United  States  it 
was  given  in  Australasia,  Norway,  Finland, 
Saxony,  and  various  other  Continental  coun 
tries.  It  would  be  an  interesting  topic  for 
speculation  as  to  just  why  English-speaking 
people  lagged  behind  others  in  this  regard, 
but  any  explanation  that  might  be  suggested 
testifies  to  the  essential  conservatism  of  the 
very  men  who  were  carrying  forward  liberal 
ideals  in  politics,  business,  education,  and 
religion.  It  may  possibly  have  been  that 
the  high  position  which  women  held  in 
America  made  for  certain  dilatoriness  in  en 
larging  their  personal  rights.  In  1797 
Charles  Fox  doubtless  represented  the  posi 
tion  of  liberal  Englishmen  when  he  said,  "It 
has  never  been  suggested  in  all  the  theories 


72  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

and  projects  of  the  most  absurd  speculation 
that  it  would  be  advisable  to  extend  the  elec 
tive  suffrage  to  the  female  sex."  And  it  is 
noteworthy  that  in  the  extension  of  suffrage 
rights  to  women  the  leaders  have  been  the 
frontier  rather  than  the  older  States.  Wyo 
ming,  Kansas,  Colorado,  Michigan,  and 
Minnesota  have  been  the  leaders  in  giving 
women  the  right  to  vote  either  for  some  or 
all  offices.  It  was  in  1848  that  the  first  con 
vention  to  discuss  the  social,  civil,  and  re 
ligious  condition  and  rights  of  women  was 
held  at  Seneca  Falls,  New  York.  At  this 
meeting  there  was  adopted  a  sort  of  declara 
tion  of  women's  independence  modeled  after 
that  of  the  famous  document  of  1776.  A 
study  of  that  declaration  will  show  how  far 
short  the  American  woman  came  of  enjoy 
ing  the  rights  which  now  are  hers.  But  de 
spite  conservative  forebodings,  the  exten 
sion  of  these  rights  has  steadily  progressed 
until  the  Constitution  of  the  government  it 
self  has  been  amended  so  as  to  give  women 
the  full  suffrage  rights  of  men.  It  is  a  far 
cry  from  the  present  position  of  women  to 
that  occupied  by  them  a  generation  ago  in 
practically  every  State  in  the  Union,  but  it 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  73 

is  simply  the  completion  of  the  conception 
of  American  individualism.  Those  that  have 
privilege  must  have  responsibility ;  those  that 
have  responsibility  must  have  liberty  to  ex 
ercise  it. 

Ill 

This  estimate  which  American  history  has 
placed  upon  the  individual  is  threatened  by 
two  conditions  in  our  national  life. 

There  is,  first,  the  rise  of  class  conscious 
ness  and  class  organization.  Due  in  no  small 
degree  to  the  evolution  of  industrialism,  this 
danger  to  the  American  ideal  springs  from 
the  importation  into  America  of  Continental 
ideas  and  experience.  Most  leaders  in  the 
attempt  at  class  organization  and  class  con 
flict  are  not  Anglo-Saxons  or  native  Amer 
icans.  They  are  the  product  of  the  struggle 
for  liberty  in  those  countries  of  Europe 
where  class  organization  still  survives  and 
the  conception  of  the  individual  has  been  ob 
scured  by  the  existence  of  class  subjection. 
In  such  countries  efforts  for  liberty  have  nat 
urally  been  those  of  classes.  When  such 
ideals  are  introduced  in  America  they  strike 
at  the  foundation  of  our  social  life  and  in- 


74  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

volve  much  more  than  economic  adjustment. 
They  would  remake  America  itself.  Their 
success  would  mean  that  American  institu 
tions  have  been  de-Americanized  by  persons 
who  are  not  the  products  of  our  social  his 
tory.  Yet  the  facts  that  occasion  such  a  pro 
gram  must  be  recognized. 

We  are  now  in  the  midst  of  a  process  the 
opposite  of  that  which  produced  our  indi 
vidualism.  The  occupation  of  a  vast  new 
country  served  to  disintegrate  social  mole 
cules  into  their  component  atoms.  Our  mod 
ern  conditions  are  a  new  process  of  integra 
tion.  If  the  analogy  between  social  and 
physical  processes  were  perfect,  reintegra- 
tion  might  mean  the  loss  of  individuality  in 
new  social  compounds.  And  that  is  pre 
cisely  what  our  new  generation  of  social 
philosophers  seems  to  desire.  But  the  anal 
ogy  is  not  perfect.  Human  beings  are  not 
unconscious  atoms.  They  are  persons,  capa 
ble  of  preserving  in  their  new  combinations 
something  of  the  self-reliance  and  self -esti 
mate  gained  during  the  short  period  of  re 
lease  from  the  control  of  highly  organized 
group  life.  It  is  impossible  to  undo  com 
pletely  the  results  of  the  development  of  the 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  75 

past  century.  We  shall  never  see  a  return 
to  slavery  or  serfdom  or  the  "subjection  of 
women."  There  is,  however,  in  progress  a 
recombination  of  social  elements  due  to  the 
economic  separation  of  those  who  own  ma 
chines  from  those  who  work  machines ;  or,  in 
more  general  terms,  into  those  who  receive 
profits  and  interest  and  those  who  receive 
wages.  Such  segregation  may  offset  the 
equality  of  opportunity  on  the  part  of  in 
dividuals.  Control  over  its  members  by  the 
labor  union  is  pronounced,  while  freedom  of 
competition  and  even  of  initiative  on  the  part 
of  manufacturers  is  often  checked  by  organ 
izations  which,  sometimes  in  collusion  with 
labor  leaders,  control  markets  and  prices. 

Such  facts  are  data,  rather  than  subjects 
of  mere  regret.  However  much  certain  per 
sons  might  desire  to  resolve  American  so 
ciety  into  insulated  individuals,  such  an  at 
tempt  is  impossible.  Our  present  task  re 
quires  far  wider  vision  and  better  technique 
than  either  the  radical  individualist  or  the 
radical  socialist  possesses.  They  both  would 
attempt  to  run  American  life  into  the  mold 
of  a  formula.  What  actually  must  be  done 
is  to  develop  a  social  order  in  which  the  in- 


76  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

dividual  may  grow  social  and  enter  into 
group-activity  without  thereby  losing  a 
sense  of  his  own  final  worth.  We  have  to 
develop  morale  not  for  atomistic  individuals 
but  for  individuals  in  their  economic  groups. 
There  can  be  little  question  that  the  pres 
ent  increase  of  such  groups  is  not  conducive 
to  that  liberty  of  individual  action  which 
made  the  United  States  what  it  is.  It  is  one 
thing  for  an  immigrant  to  settle  on  a  farm 
where  he  is  spatially  independent  and 
quite  another  thing  for  him  to  settle  in  the 
midst  of  a  great  city,  work  machines  which 
he  does  not  own,  and  join  unions  which  bar 
gain  collectively.  The  pioneer  and  children 
of  pioneers  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case 
found  themselves  self-dependent,  each  fam 
ily  forming  a  little  world  in  itself.  The  chil 
dren  of  immigrants  who  have  settled  by  the 
millions  in  the  city  have  no  conditions  which 
urge  individualistic  development  and  many 
that  demand  group  action  both  for  defense 
and  for  new  advantages.  The  range  of  op 
portunity  for  self-determination  under  such 
conditions  is  limited.  Such  collective  opera 
tion  as  our  industrial  processes  involve  tends 
to  make  types  rather  than  individuals. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  77 

When  a  sense  of  freedom  sways  such  per 
sons  it  too  often  takes  the  form  of  a  desire 
for  class  liberty  and  class  control — the  bat 
tle-cries  of  an  alien  social  history. 

If  such  development  is  unavoidable,  either 
our  American  ideal  of  opportunity  for  every 
individual  will  be  abandoned,  and  instead 
of  the  foreigner  being  Americanized  the 
American  will  be  foreignized,  or  our  con 
ception  of  the  individual  must  be  adapted  to 
new  conditions.  If,  as  we  must  believe,  the 
second  alternative  is  to  prevail,  we  face  a 
task  which  cannot  be  escaped:  the  mainte 
nance  of  individual  liberty  in  the  midst  of 
industrial  groups.  Hitherto  such  classifica 
tion  has  tended  to  solidify  itself  and  to  make 
the  passage  of  individuals  from  one  class  to 
another  all  but  impossible.  This  has  been 
the  history  of  social  development  on  the  con 
tinent  of  Europe.  From  this  has  come  revo 
lution,  that  is,  the  determination  of  one 
class  as  a  class  to  enjoy  by  conquest  the  priv 
ileges  shared  by  another  class.  In  our 
American  life  the  way  has  lain  and  must  still 
lie  open  to  every  man  who  will  utilize  the 
opportunities  which  he  may  have  and  will 
play  the  game  according  to  the  rules  which 


78  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

are  now  set.  To  protect  this  inherited  equal 
ity  of  opportunity  is  an  imminent  duty.  Nor 
is  it  impossible. 

One  corrective  to  the  deindividualizing  of 
those  forces  into  economic  groups  is  an  en 
riched  liberty  in  noneconomic  life.  As  has 
been  already  pointed  out,  American  indi 
vidualism  involves  something  more  than 
economic  interests.  It  concerns  the  entire 
personality.  A  little  while  ago  an  interest 
ing  little  book  was  written  about  a  New 
Englander  who  lost  his  money  and  joined 
the  workingmen.  He  found  there  a  liberty 
and  a  group  of  privileges  he  never  could 
have  enjoyed  as  a  salaried  person  with  a 
certain  social  status  to  maintain.  He  found 
opportunities  for  study  furnished  free  or  at 
small  expense,  amusements,  churches,  public 
parks  and  playgrounds  for  his  children. 
Suddenly  he  realized  that  as  a  member  of  a 
class  that  he  had  judged  unfree  he  was 
freer  to  develop  his  own  life  than  he  had  been 
as  a  respectable  salaried  person  trying  to  ape 
the  habits  of  persons  with  larger  incomes. 
As  he  himself  said,  this  New  Englander  had 
really  discovered  America. 

This  discovery,  however,  must  be  more 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  79 

than  a  mere  literary  tour  de  force.  Our  col 
lective  life  must  be  so  organized  that  all  in 
dividuals  have  this  sort  of  freedom. 

But  freedom  will  not  come  to-day  any 
more  than  in  the  past  to  people  who  are 
afraid  to  take  risks.  It  requires  much  the 
same  sort  of  spirit  of  adventure  for  a  family 
in  touch  with  families  of  larger  income  to 
practice  thrift  as  it  required  for  our  ances 
tors  to  break  up  the  prairie.  It  takes  daring 
for  a  man  of  small  income  to  save  money.  It 
takes  self-control  to  substitute  study  for 
cheap  amusements.  It  is  training  in  indi 
vidualism  for  a  young  man  to  refuse  to  go 
with  "his  crowd"  and  for  a  young  woman  to 
decline  to  follow  styles  of  dress  and  dancing. 
All  such  individualism,  however,  is  possible 
in  America.  Social  distinctions  are  economic 
and  not  those  of  opportunity.  So  long  as 
we  build  no  political  or  social  wall  around 
economic  classes,  so  long  the  spirit  of  indi 
vidualism  may  hope  to  survive. 

How  far  it  is  possible  for  us  to  recognize 
the  individual  as  over  against  economic 
groups  of  individuals  has  not  yet  been  deter 
mined.  In  this  regard  as  well  as  others, 
America  is  still  in  the  making.  Economic 


80  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

struggle  necessitates  the  consolidation  of  op 
posing  interests.  One  moment  union  labor 
seems  in  the  saddle,  another  moment  the 
champions  of  the  open  shop.  In  theory  the 
genuinely  open  shop  (not  the  open  shop 
which  is  a  closed  shop  to  unionized  workers ) 
seems  undoubtedly  more  in  accord  with  the 
American  spirit  of  giving  equal  rights  to  all. 
It  is  a  fair  question,  however,  whether  the 
open  shop  could  maintain  the  advantages 
which  its  members  enjoy  if  there  were  not  or 
ganized  labor.  But  the  question  is  simply 
one  phase  of  the  larger  problem  as  to  how 
individualism  can  be  maintained  in  the  midst 
of  economic  collectivism  involved  in  trade 
unions  and  collective  bargaining  of  all  sorts. 
My  own  faith  is  that  the  American  life  will 
dare  set  precedents  here  as  in  the  past.  It 
developed  the  agrarian  and  commercial  in 
dividualism.  It  will  now  develop  individual 
ism  in  an  industrial  order.  But  just  as 
agrarian  and  commercial  individualism  was 
dependent  upon  the  actual  conditions  set  by 
farming  and  commerce,  so  industrial  indi 
vidualism  will  have  to  reckon  with  the  actual 
conditions  set  by  our  economic  life.  To  pre 
vent  the  tyranny  of  class-consciousness 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  81 

among  great  bodies  of  men  and  women  of 
necessity  living  in  close  vicinity  to  the  ma 
chines  which  they  run  and  by  the  nature  of 
their  occupation  forced  to  work  in  large 
groups,  requires  works  as  well  as  faith.  If 
we  are  not  to  develop  a  new  un-American 
America — "our  America,"  as  the  anti- An 
glo-Saxon,  anti-Puritan,  anti-individual 
leaders  dare  to  call  it — it  is  necessary  to  pre 
vent  the  absorption  of  interests  by  one  eco 
nomic  group  life.  Every  American  can  and 
should  belong  to  a  variety  of  groups,  each 
representing  different  social  ideals.  In  the 
resulting  fellowship  class  distinctions  will 
be  offset.  The  church  is  one  of  these  groups, 
the  school,  the  college,  the  neighborhood,  the 
political  party,  the  athletic  club,  the  philan 
thropic  association  are  others,  and  the  list 
can  be  indefinitely  lengthened.  In  no  coun 
try  is  there  the  abundance  of  group  interests 
as  in  America.  To  consolidate  them  in  eco 
nomic  classes  would  be  to  submerge  indi 
viduality.  To  scatter  individuals  among 
them  is  to  reproduce  in  our  more  complex 
social  life  the  forces  that  made  toward  in 
dividual  development  in  early  American  his 
tory.  To  make  social  life  center  about  the 


82  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

economic  is  an  attack  on  Americanism.  Eco 
nomic  interests,  whether  capitalistic  or  labor, 
may  unintelligently  favor  such  a  consolida 
tion,  through  the  bitterness  of  strife,  but  all 
the  more  zealously  should  those  who  wish 
America  to  remain  true  to  its  history  and 
genius  seek  to  make  diversity  of  group  in 
terest  possible  and  inevitable.  Exhortation 
and  denunciation  must  yield  to  practical 
measures.  Economic  warfare  between  em 
ployers  and  labor  unions  must  be  replaced 
by  cooperation  and  arbitration.  Our  public 
school  should  be  preserved  from  efforts  to 
use  education  in  the  interests  of  segregated 
religion  or  race.  Only  as  individuals  share 
in  other  than  single  groups  can  the  individ 
ual  be  preserved  from  subordination  to 
class.  And  only  thus  can  genuine  Amer 
icanism  survive. 

The  second  foe  of  individualism  in  Amer 
ica  is  the  limitation  set  by  ethnic  groups. 
Statistics  make  no  impression  upon  most  of 
us,  and  perhaps  it  is  well,  but  no  one  can  even 
superficially  examine  a  census  report  with 
out  being  impressed  with  the  problem  of  our 
foreign  citizenship.  If  it  were  simply  a  mat 
ter  of  birthplace,  it  would  be  simple,  but  the 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  83 

history  of  the  United  States  shows  plainly 
that  foreign  groups  tend  to  segregate.  One 
has  only  to  walk  across  the  lower  end  of 
New  York  City  to  understand  what  this 
means.  The  same  conditions  are  to  be  found 
not  only  in  all  cities  and  larger  communi 
ties,  but  in  country  districts  as  well.  Very 
few  foreign  people  have  migrated  as  yet  to 
the  south  of  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line,  but 
in  the  North  an  ethnographic  map  would 
show  the  tendency  toward  segregation  of 
representatives  of  the  various  nations  of  the 
world.  Nor  is  this  tendency  in  many  of 
these  ethnic  groups  removed  in  the  second 
generation.  Members  of  the  groups  find 
opportunity  in  the  larger  American  life  for 
getting  wealth  and  political  power,  but  the 
ethnic  solidarity  is  locally  maintained  by 
churches,  schools,  and  social  customs.  The 
individual  remains,  therefore,  to  a  very  con 
siderable  extent,  a  member  of  a  group.  Par 
ticularly  is  this  true  when  interested  parties 
maintain  propaganda  in  glorification  of  the 
fatherland.  In  too  many  cases  the  immi 
grant  moves  from  a  native  group  across  the 
seas  into  a  group  possessing  almost  the  same 
characteristics  in  America. 


84  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

As  an  illustration  of  such  ethnic  solidarity 
we  may  refer,  not  to  a  foreign  group,  but  to 
the  Negroes.  The  curse  of  slavery  has  out 
lived  the  emancipation  of  slaves.  A  few 
years  ago  the  problem  seemed  to  be  one 
largely  of  numbers  and  so  confined  to  the 
South.  Individual  Negroes  in  the  North 
lived  as  any  newcomer  might  live  in  our 
towns  and  cities.  They  did  not  intermarry, 
they  were  not  given  social  standing,  but  the 
same  was  largely  true  of  members  of  other 
nationalities.  But  within  the  last  few  years 
there  have  been  decided  changes,  some  of 
them,  I  regret  to  say,  decidedly  for  the 
worse.  The  Negro  in  the  North  doubtless 
has  more  political  freedom  than  in  the  South, 
but  the  increase  in  the  Negro  population 
has  tended  to  transfer  to  the  North  some  of 
the  most  difficult  problems  of  the  South. 
We  have  lynchings,  race  riots,  bombings,  in 
the  North.  Labor  unions  have  discrimin 
ated  against  the  Negro  and  race  hatred  has 
already  expressed  itself  among  people  of 
the  lower  classes. 

At  the  same  time  the  experience  of  the 
Negroes  in  the  Great  War  has  given  them  a 
new  sense  of  personal  worth.  Education 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  85 

has  made  them  feel  an  intellectual  equality 
and  business  success  has  given  them  self- 
respect.     Among  themselves  the  -coopera 
tion  of  both  these  two  new  conditions  is  pro 
ducing  a  racial   self-consciousness   that  is 
capable  of  almost  any  sort  of  outcome  ac 
cording  to  the  treatment  it  is  accorded.    In 
Northern  cities  the  border  line  of  popula 
tion  is  already  experiencing  the  demand  of 
the  Negroes  for  treatment  on  the  same  equal 
ity  in  schools  and  in  social  settlements,  if 
not  in  other  ways.    That  is  to  say,  the  Ne 
gro  problem  can  to-day  no  more  than  in  1861 
be  detached  from  that  of  the  worth  of  indi 
viduals  as  persons.     But  it  must  be  an 
swered  in  the  light  of  the  indisputable  fact 
that  Negroes  are  segregating  themselves  and 
are  being  segregated  into  an  ethnic  group. 
I  shall  presently  return  to  this  matter  and 
attempt    to    show   that   American    history 
makes  it  plain  that  an  ethnic  group  is  not 
necessarily  antagonistic  to  the  development 
of  the  individual.    At  present  I  wish  only  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  the  so-called  Negro 
problem  is  not  unique  in  the  development  of 
our  American  social  order.     It  has  its  own 
peculiar  difficulties,  but  it  is  not  unsolvable, 


86  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

provided  it  is  answered  in  the  terms  of  our 
experience. 

What  is  true  in  the  case  of  the  Negroes 
is  true,  although  less  markedly,  of  other  na 
tionalities,  who  in  America  have  tended  to 
segregate.  Of  course,  the  case  of  the  Negro 
is  particularly  difficult  because  the  color 
question  intensifies  the  racial  consciousness. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  relatively  small 
group  of  Japanese  and  Chinese.  But  who 
ever  is  acquainted  with  the  structure  of  our 
cities  knows  that  the  ethnic  lines  are  not  to 
be  ignored.  Movement  of  nationalities  is 
not  toward  dissipating  the  members  in  a 
city,  but  to  maintain  an  almost  clannish 
unity  of  habits. 

IV 

The  dangers  in  this  situation  cannot  be  ig 
nored.  Some  possible  offsets  I  shall  con 
sider  in  my  last  lecture.  I  wish  now  only  to 
call  attention  to  the  historical  bearing  of  this 
ethnic  grouping  on  the  ideal  of  individual 
ism. 

A  study  of  the  ethnographic  distribution 
in  the  United  States  will  show  that  the  seg 
regation  of  nationalities  has  always  ex- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  87 

isted.  The  original  colonists,  of  course, 
were  largely  of  English  stock,  but  there  were 
also  settlements  of  Swedes,  Germans, 
French,  and  Dutch,  each  of  which  main 
tained  a  certain  integrity  of  life.  To  this 
day  it  is  possible  to  trace  in  the  older  sec 
tions  of  the  country  these  ethnic  strains.  Nor 
has  the  Anglo-Saxon,  any  more  than  other 
nationalities,  practiced  exogamy.  Marriages 
have  taken  place  within  each  ethnic  group. 
So  far  is  it  from  being  true  that  the  indi 
vidualism  in  America  means  universal  dis 
tribution  of  individuals,  a  melange  of  disin 
tegrated  nationalities. 

The  individual  has  developed  throughout 
our  history  within  ethnic  groups  which  have 
persisted  generation  after  generation.  But 
he  has  also  transcended  them.  While  he  has 
had  ties  binding  him  to  people  of  kindred 
blood,  the  forces  of  business,  education,  phil 
anthropy,  reform,  and  to  some  extent  the 
church,  have  been  centrifugal.  Within  the 
individual  atom  there  have  been  negative 
and  positive  forces  making  toward  a  great 
variety  of  combinations.  Ethnic  groups 
have  not  made  individualism  in  America 
tantamount  to  isolation.  The  individual  can 


88  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

continue  to  have  a  large  number  of  social 
contacts.  Partnership  in  a  number  of  groups 
will  tend  in  the  future  as  in  the  past  to  offset 
the  solidarity  of  any  one  group.  Living  thus 
with  a  variety  of  interests,  the  individual  has 
found  and  can  continue  to  find  limitations 
set  by  one  set  of  relations  offset  by  experience 
in  quite  different  groupings.  In  other  words, 
the  individualism  developed  in  and  by  Amer 
ica  is  far  from  being  that  of  the  repellant 
atom  or  the  oversensitive  soul  oppressed  by 
spiritual  loneliness.  It  is  social  and  pro 
ductive  of  democracy. 


In  the  furtherance  of  this  ideal  there  has 
been  developed  what  might  be  called  the 
American  technique  of  democracy,  in  no 
small  degree  inherited  from  our  English 
forbears.  What  is  this  technique? 

First:  the  democratizing  of  a  right  seen 
to  have  become  a  monopolized  privilege  of  a 
group.  This  takes  place  at  the  point  of  ten 
sion  and  does  not  presuppose  a  prior  reor 
ganization  of  the  social  order.  Thus,  for 
example,  it  was  in  the  case  of  suffrage.  The 
institutions  of  the  country  were  not  de- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  89 

stroyed  in  order  to  give  votes  to  slaves  and 
later  to  women.  Such  persons  were  simply 
treated  like  those  who  already  possessed  the 
suffrage  and  the  class  of  unprivileged  in  this 
respect  disappeared. 

Second:  the  readjustment  of  the  social 
order  to  the  new  conditions  set  by  the  de 
mocratizing  of  rights  at  tension  points.  As 
the  eruption  of  a  volcano  leads  to  changes 
of  the  earth's  surface  over  a  wide  area,  so 
the  establishment  of  a  new  right  is  followed 
in  America  by  gradual  readjustments  within 
the  great  hinterland  of  the  social  order.  To 
theorists  and  radicals  this  seems  mere  oppor 
tunism.  To  the  historical  student  of  society 
it  is  healthy  evolution,  assuring  the  main 
tenance  of  order  during  periods  of  transi 
tion.  It  is  the  opposite  of  revolution  with 
its  destruction  of  institutions  and  its  after 
math  of  misery. 

Third:  the  development  of  a  community 
of  interest  on  the  part  of  individuals  in  fields 
which  are  not  those  of  a  single  group.  In 
dividuals  of  one  economic  or  ethnic  group 
meet  with  individuals  of  other  similar  groups 
for  the  development  of  some  phase  of  social 
welfare  which  is  neither  economic  nor  ethnic. 


90  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

In  order  that  such  a  community  of  interest 
may  develop,  American  life  has  always 
abounded  in  variety  of  group  interest  due  to 
the  voluntary  association  of  individuals. 
Self-reliant  men  with  a  variety  of  interests 
live  together  in  some  way  which  does  not 
subject  them  one  to  another.  Naturally  in  an 
actual  human  society  it  is  not  to  be  expected 
that  such  conditions  will  be  perfectly  real 
ized.  Economic,  social,  family,  ecclesiasti 
cal  restraints  may  serve  to  repress  the  in 
dividual,  but  the  fact  that  we  disapprove  of 
such  oppression  is  in  itself  testimony  to  in 
dividualism  as  our  ideal.  For  the  further 
ance  of  this  ideal  and  its  expression  in  actual 
social  relationships  American  democracy 
was  born.  Indeed,  democracy  in  America 
might  almost  be  defined  as  the  organization 
of  society  with  such  political  and  social  in 
stitutions  as  permit  free  and  equal  individ 
uals  to  develop  their  personal  life  through 
participation  in  an  indefinite  number  of  so 
cial  groups. 

Thus  the  very  process  of  the  extension  of 
rights  is  in  itself  an  ideal.  We  believe  it  can 
be  trusted.  We  trust  the  leavening  power  of 
any  advance  toward  larger  justice.  Social 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  91 

change  we  therefore  do  not  fear  because  we 
have  faith  in  the  penetrating  power  of  a  new 
ideal  and  its  inevitable  consequents  in  a 
democracy.  In  the  new  conditions  thus  es 
tablished  the  individual  gains  new  liberty 
and  opportunity. 

It  is  to  this  technique  we  look  for  the  pres 
ervation  of  America  from  that  evil  genius  of 
abstract  political  logic,  the  Great  Individual 
of  a  social  class.  Social  relations  are  in 
dispensable,  but  social  solidarity  is  not  the 
goal  of  healthy  social  process.  Class  con 
trol  means  the  death  of  the  free  individual. 
Social  life  is  a  noble  servant  but  a  terrible 
master.  Atomistic,  anarchic  individualism 
we  have  never  sought.  Group  interests  have 
always  been  ours.  But  our  institutions  have 
been  environment,  not  ends.  They  make  life 
richer  and  freer,  not  more  uniform.  The 
problem  of  class  solidarity  can  be  answered 
aright  only  as  a  way  is  found  by  which  free 
individuals  can  live  together  without  subjec 
tion  and  without  denial  of  the  right  to  exploit 
social  opportunity.  Without  some  group - 
authority,  individualism  becomes  an 
archy;  without  individualism  group-author 
ity  means  tyranny  of  lord  or  class.  Democ- 


92  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

racy  is  the  device  by  which  America  has 
made  possible  the  socializing  of  rights,  the 
subjection  of  group-organization  to  the  serv 
ice  of  the  individual,  and  the  maintenance  of 
order. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  93 

LECTURE  III 
DEMOCRACY 

IF  the  free  individual  possessed  of  po 
litical,  religious  and  social  liberty  is  the  atom 
of  our  American  system,  democracy  is  its 
molecule.  To  this  second  American  ideal 
we  shall  now  give  our  attention. 

Democracy  has  been  given  new  impor 
tance  in  the  last  few  years.  We  fought  a  war 
to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy.  We 
have  been  told  that  the  evils  of  democracy 
can  be  cured  by  more  democracy  and  when 
one  wishes  to  cap  the  climax  of  some  po 
litical  oration,  he  praises  democracy.  Far 
be  it  from  one  who  would  apprize  ideals  to 
belittle  this  indiscriminate  use  of  a  term 
which  has  so  many  meanings.  But  he  who 
would  understand  the  democracy  of  Amer 
ica  must  clear  his  mind  once  and  for  all  of 
some  of  the  interpretations  which  have  been 
given  the  term. 

I 

To  appreciate  the  real  significance  of 
American  democracy,  it  is  well  to  bear  in 


94  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

mind  that  there  never  have  been  any  more 
democratic  institutions  than  those  now  in 
the  world.  And  this  is  true  even  though  by 
a  study  of  the  dictionary  one  arrives  at  a 
definition  of  the  term  "democracy"  not  in 
accord  with  the  actual  situation  we  find  in 
our  country.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
fathers  of  our  Constitution  were  not  inter 
ested  in  the  abstract  questions  of  govern 
ment.  Although  innumerable  writers  from 
1776  to  1800  adopted  such  classical  names 
as  Cato,  Gracchus,  unlike  their  French  con 
temporaries  they  were  not  obsessed  with 
classicism.  What  they  wanted  were  very 
concrete  things — self-government  and  suffi 
cient  unity  between  the  colonies  to  prevent 
internecine  war  and  social  disorder.  As 
Theophilus  Parsons  said  in  1787,  they  were 
not  concerned  with  social  adjustment  or  re 
constructions,  but  with  union.  They  were 
not  inventing  popular  government,  they 
were  adjusting  institutions  and  political  ex 
perience  to  the  new  conditions  which  had  de 
veloped  in  nearly  two  centuries'  life  on  a  new 
continent.  Individualism  was  to  be  made 
cooperative;  a  more  powerful  government 
was  to  preserve  existing  governments  with- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  95 

out  trenching  on  the  life  of  the  citizens.  In 
the  minds  of  the  fathers  that  government 
was  best  which  governed  least.  Thus  Amer 
ican  democracy  in  seeking  to  prevent  the 
establishment  of  conditions  all  but  universal 
in  the  older  States  put  few  restraints  upon 
individual  initiative  in  state,  church,  com 
merce,  and  school.  Therein  appears  the  uni 
versal  law  that  a  socialized  ideal  finds  ex 
pression  in  those  institutions  and  customs  in 
which  efficiency  has  already  been  gained. 
Liberty  in  America,  unlike  liberty  in 
France,  never  sought  to  protect  itself  by 
military  conquests.  It  was  the  difference 
between  George  Washington  indignantly 
refusing  to  be  king,  and  Napoleon  Bona 
parte  seeking  to  bring  liberties  to  a  reor 
ganized  Europe  through  an  empire  built  up 
by  war. 

The  American  colonies  continued  that 
phase  of  English  constitutional  development 
represented  by  the  Whig  Party.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  the  government  of  Eng 
land  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  German 
family  and  into  the  hands  of  a  king,  George 
III,  under  whom  English  Tories  undertook 
to  force  upon  American  colonists  theories 


96  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

of  government  which  were  being  combated 
by  statesmen  like  Edmund  Burke.  They 
sought  to  compel  Englishmen  on  this  side  of 
the  water  to  yield  to  anti-English  concep 
tions  of  royal  and  Parliamentary  preroga 
tives.  Englishmen  in  the  American  colonies 
refused  to  submit,  and  there  ensued  on  the 
soil  of  America  a  struggle  which  saved  lib 
eralism  not  only  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
but  in  England  itself.  When  England  thus 
made  its  contribution  to  the  history  of  de 
mocracy,  it  little  thought  that  there  would 
appear  on  American  soil  a  conception  of 
citizenship  more  extensive  and  more  ideal 
than  that  which  existed  at  home.  But  when 
the  American  colonies  organized  themselves 
into  a  Confederation,  and  later  into  the 
United  States  of  America,  they  extended  the 
rights  of  Englishmen  into  the  rights  of  men. 
In  that  act  the  United  States  made  its  own 
contribution  to  the  development  of  the  state 
and  of  democracy. 

In  the  establishment  of  the  new  nation  the 
fathers  not  only  made  the  rights  of  individ 
uals  paramount  in  government,  but  they 
made  the  people  exercising  those  rights  the 
state.  Thereby  they  instituted  a  new  con- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  97 

ception  of  the  state.     On  the  continent  of 
Europe  the  government — the  regierung— 
was  the  state,  and  the  state  was  not  respon 
sible  to  those  it  governed.     In  the  United 
States  of  America  the  state  and  the  gov 
erned  were  the  same.    Nor  were  Americans 
even  then  content.    Those .; two  political  steps 
would  have  marked  an  epoch;  but  we  did 
more  than  that.     We  offered  citizenship, 
which  involved  the  right  of  being  the  gov 
ernor  of  oneself,  to  all  the  world.    Other  na 
tions  had  offered  to  the  oppressed  of  other 
peoples  the  rights  and  privileges  of  asylum. 
England  had  done  this  for  the  Huguenots, 
Prussia  had  done  it  for  the  Jews.    But  rights 
of  asylum  are  by  no  means  identical  with 
citizenship,  much  less  with  government  it 
self.     In   offering  this   cjjizfra&ip   to   the 
world  the  United  States  took  a  step  of  which 
men  had  hardly  dreamed.    I  fancy  the  fore 
most  of  the  fathers  could  not  have  imagined 
it  would  carry  America  to  its  present  po 
litical  situation.    For  thereby  came  nation 
wide  representative  democracy — not  a  theo 
retically  developed  democracy,  it  is  true,  but 
a  germinal  conception  which  opened  govern 
ment  arid  office  to  every  citizen. 


98  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

Popular  government  in  the  early  stages  of 
the  American  nation  meant  the  right  of 
people  to  choose  their  representatives  to 
form  a  government.  The  town  meeting  has 
sometimes  been  used  by  theoretical  demo 
crats  as  a  model  for  national  life.  My  guess 
is  that  such  critics  of  our  theory  of  govern 
ment  never  lived  under  a  town  meeting.  For 
if  there  is  anything  that  characterizes  town 
meetings,  it  is  the  election  of  selectmen  to 
conduct  affairs  for  the  ensuing  year.  The 
democratic  ideal  so  far  as  it  actually  exists 
in  America  has  been  one  of  representation 
rather  than  of  continuous  voting.  All  per 
sons  are  equal  in  that  they  have  the  right  of 
participating  in  the  election  of  a  representa 
tive  government.  When  it  came  to  the  or 
ganization  of  the  United  States  the  framers 
of  the  Constitution  took  a  step  forward 
which  was  to  be  of  far  more  significance  than 
they  could  have  realized.  Instead  of  the 
Constitution's  being  adopted  by  the  various 
Legislatures,  which  might  have  limited  de 
mocracy  to  the  confederation  of  sovereign 
States,  it  was  adopted  by  the  people  them 
selves  through  conventions.  By  the  Con 
stitution,  also,  every  individual  comes  in  con- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS  99 

tact  with  a  succession  of  governments  which 
he  has  himself  helped  to  elect — the  local, 
county,  State,  the  federal.  Thus  the  rights 
of  the  individual  are  preserved  and  Amer 
ican  democracy  is  seen  to  be  what  it  really 
is — a  group  of  institutions,  laws,  and  au 
thorities  which  make  it  possible  for  citizens 
possessing  an  equality  of  rights  to  live  to 
gether  without  disorder;  or  more  briefly,  the 
ideal  of  American  democracy  is  not  a  theo 
retical  participation  of  all  the  people  in  all 
political  activities  all  the  time,  but,  rather, 
an  equality  of  opportunity  for  each  individ 
ual  in  all  phases~oT  social  life  to  share  in  de 
termining  his  government. 

During  recent  years  there  has  emerged  a 
group  of  writers  who  are  apparently  indif 
ferent  to  the  historical  fact  that  the  United 
States  is  not  a  democracy  in  the  full  theoret 
ical  sense,  but  is  a  republic  possessing  a  rep 
resentative  government.  Attempts  have 
been  made  to  increase  the  direct  responsibil 
ity  of  the  people  by  the  establishment  of  the 
initiative,  the  referendum,  and  the  recall,  but 
it  seems  to  be  a  general  opinion  that  these  de 
vices  have  failed  to  accomplish  fully  what 
it  was  hoped  they  would  accomplish.  The 


100          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

character  of  public  officials  has  not  mate 
rially  changed,  and  the  repeated  call  to  the 
polls  has  tended  to  diminish  the  actual  num 
ber  of  voters.  A  representative  government 
needs  some  sort  of  check  in  the  form  of  a 
referendum,  but  the  experience  we  have  had 
makes  it  plain  that  government  cannot 
fundamentally  be  by  referendum. 

In  America  sovereignty  lies  with  the  peo 
ple.  Its  representatives  in  the  government 
do  not  originate  power  but  have  the  right  to 
use  it  within  limits  set  by  law.  In  the  larger 
governmental  system,  the  Federal  govern 
ment,  this  basic  principle  of  representation 
is  still  further  developed.  Individuals  elect 
the  federal  as  truly  as  the  local  government. 
By  this  means  our  idea  of  democracy  is  pro 
tected  from  injury  by  the  class  ideals  so 
easily  evoked.  The  opinion  of  some  people 
seems  to  be  that  because  they  belong  to  the 
nation  they  belong  to  the  government ;  that 
they  have  a  right  therefore  to  choose  what 
laws  they  shall  obey  and  when.  Their  atti 
tude  reminds  me  of  the  old  Frenchwoman  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution.  She  was  sitting 
at  the  door  of  the  meeting  place  of  the  Con 
vention.  A  member  of  the  Girondin  party 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         101 

was  about  to  pass  by  her  without  salutation, 
whereupon  she  seized  him  by  the  hair  of  his 
head,  pulled  his  head  back  and  forth,  shout 
ing,  "Bow  your  head  to  the  sovereign  peo 
ple!"  But  in  American  democracy  the  sov 
ereign  people  obey  those  to  whom  it 
delegates  the  exercise  of  sovereignty. 

This  conception  of  a  social  technique  by 
which  free  people  can  live  together  without 
subjection  one  to  another,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case  involves  a  respect  for  law.  Here 
we  find  a  most  difficult  element  in  the  mod 
ern  operations  of  democracy.  We  have  so 
many  representative  governments  in  town, 
county,  State,  and  nation  that  the  volume  of 
law  to  be  obeyed  passes  our  knowledge. 
Furthermore,  a  belief  on  the  part  of  many 
good  people  that  a  reform  can  be  effected 
simply  by  legislation  has  served  to  increase 
the  distemper  of  mind.  In  consequence 
there  has  grown  up  a  dangerous  habit  of  dis 
crimination  in  our  attitude  toward  law.  _In- 
dividuals  frankly  claim  the  right  to  deter 
mine  whether  or  not  they  approve  of  a  law 
before  they  obey  it.  Such  an  attitude  of 
mind  is  clearly  dangerous  to  the  very  theory 
of  our  democracy.  The  excessive  number  of 


102          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

laws  cannot  safely  be  permitted  to  lead  to  a 
disregard  of  law  as  the  expression  of  the 
delegated  sovereignty  of  the  people.  Per 
haps  here  more  than  anywhere  else  is  it  pos 
sible  for  us  to  make  a  definite  appeal  to  in 
telligent  citizens.  No  citizen  can  safely  ac 
quire  the  habit  of  choosing  which  laws  he 
shall  obey.  Of  course  he  has  the  right  to 
become  a  revolutionist,  but  he  cannot  be  a 
revolutionist  and  a  law-abiding  citizen  at  the 
same  time.  If  he  wishes  to  be  a  revolution 
ist,  he  must  expect  to  take  the  consequences; 
but  if  he  does  not  expect  to  be  a  revolution 
ist,  he  must  obey  the  laws.  To  do  otherwise 
would  be  to  imperil  the  very  structure  upon 
which  property  and  other  rights  depend.  It 
is  hard  to  see  how  respectable  citizens  who 
deliberately  choose  to  break  the  laws  cover 
ing  the  manufacture,  sale,  and  transporta 
tion  of  liquor  can  hope  for  continued  obedi 
ence  to  other  laws  which  they  want  observed. 
I  am  not  so  foolish  as  to  say  that  the  United 
States  has  become  lawless,  but  I  think  it  true 
that  while  substantial  citizens  demand  the 
enforcement  of  law,  they  frequently  prefer 
that  obedience  to  law  should  be  rendered  by 
others  rather  than  by  themselves. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          103 

At  this  point  we  face  a  real  test  of  the 
validity  of  our  ideal  of  a  democracy  governed 
by  representatives  with  delegated  powers. 
And  such  a  test  is  also  one  of  the  individual. 
Unless  our  state  is  composed  of  law-abiding 
citizens,  ready  to  practice  self-control  in 
loyal  obedience  to  an  established  govern 
ment,  it  will  face  the  alternative  of  absolut 
ism  or  anarchy.  No  democrat  can^survive 
the  disrespect  of  its  citizens. 

Here  again  one's  faith  in  our  institutions 
rests  upon  the  history  of  social  attitudes. 
The  development  of  our  democracy  has  not 
been  without  similar  crises.  But  our  ideal 
ism  and  the  hatred  of  disloyalty  to  our  insti 
tutions  have  always  checked  anarchy.  With 
this  history  in  mind  no  lover  of  his  country 
can  despair  in  the  face  of  to-day's  problems. 
The  effervescence  of  lawlessness  will  pass. 
Not  only  the  government  at  Washington  but 
the  inner  life  of  democracy  still  lives  and 
progresses. 

Such  faith  is  justified  because  American 
conceptions  of  the  state  and  society  are  born 
of  experience  and  not  of  theory.  In  fact, 
one  cannot  go  far  astray  in  saying  that  what 
we  call  abstract  rights  to  be  found  in  so  many 


104          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

Declarations  are  really  the  generalization  of 
certain  concrete  rights  enjoyed  by  English 
men  at  home  and  in  the  colonies.  But  these 
rights  never  involved  the  abolition  of  gov 
ernmental  oversight  or  administration. 
Laws  made  by  the  representatives  of  the 
people  were  to  be  obeyed. 

II 

Yet  American  democracy  has  not  always 
been  quite  the  same.     It  has  developed  its 
own  inner  powers  of  self-direction.     Two 
periods  are  easily  distinguished.     The  first 
was  that  in  which  leadership  and  govern 
ment  were  in  the  hands  of  recognized  leaders. 
For  a  generation,  as  political  parties  began 
to  form  themselves,  there  was  a  struggle  be 
tween  what  might  be  called  the  notables  of 
society  and  the  great  masses.    One  can  see 
the  various  periods  in  the  process  by  which 
the  conception  of  democracy,  as  we  now  have 
it,  emerged.    Different  points  of  view  can  be 
seen  in  the  attitude  of  Winthrop  and  Cotton 
as  opposed  to  that  of  Hooker,  even  in  the 
seventeenth  century.    Connecticut  certainly 
had  a  more  democratic  attitude  toward  life 
and  government  than  had  the  Puritans  of 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          105 

Massachusetts  Bay.  In  the  South,  in  addi 
tion  to  slaves,  the  growing  population  was 
roughly  divided  into  three  classes:  the  first 
families,  the  small  farmers,  and  the  landless 
men.  The  first  families  were  supposed  to 
control  the  state.  The  people  who  lived  on 
their  small  frontier  farms  were  supposed  to 
be  thankful  for  the  care  bestowed  upon  pub 
lic  affairs  by  the  wealthy  and  educated, 
whose  names  had  become  synonymous  with 
colonial  history.  However  much  we  may 
judge  that  Professor  Beard  has  over-esti 
mated  the  economic  elements  in  the  origin  of 
our  Constitution,  it  is  beyond  dispute  that 
from  1760  until  the  adoption  of  the  Consti 
tution  in  1789  there  was  in  the  entire  range 
of  colonies  a  persistent  rivalry  and  in  many 
cases  open  hostility  between  people  who  were 
opening  up  the  new  land  on  the  western  fron 
tier  from  New  Hampshire  to  Georgia,  and 
the  commercial  and  the  planter  groups 
nearer  tidewater.  The  forefathers  of  the  re 
public,  with  the  exception  of  Patrick  Henry 
and  one  or  two  others,  belonged  to  this  quasi- 
aristocratic  group.  There  were,  of  course, 
elections  of  officers  by  the  duly  constituted 
voters,  but,  as  in  England,  the  members  of 


106  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

significant  families  and  those  who  for  other 
reason  had  social  prestige  were  naturally 
chosen  for  office  and  responsibility.  The  list 
of  signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence,  as  well  as  members  of  the  Constitu 
tional  Convention,  is  a  sort  of  American 
peerage.  "It  is  a  list  of  the  demigods,"  said 
Jefferson  when  he  read  the  names  of  the 
signers  of  the  call  for  that  Convention. 
When  the  federal  government  was  estab 
lished  in  1789,  the  same  situation  is  to  be 
found.  Hamilton  was  frankly  distrustful  of 
the  people  and  Washington  seems  to  have 
had  some  sympathy  with  that  distrust.  The 
Constitution  was  so  organized  that  the  peo 
ple  could  not  elect  the  President  directly 
but  were  to  elect  those  who,  after  careful 
consideration,  would  select  the  best  avail 
able  person.  Thus  liberty  was  almost  tanta 
mount  to  the  right  of  the  masses  to  elect  their 
officials  but  not,  according  to  practice,  from 
their  own  number. 

And  yet  during  the  very  period  of  the  in 
cubation  of  the  Constitution,  there  were 
forces  developing  which  were  to  produce  a 
very  different  party  spirit  and  become  a  new 
force  in  the  American  society.  I  do  not  re- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          107 

fer  so  much  to  the  philosophical  democracy 
of  Thomas  Jefferson,  important  as  that  was. 
He  was  a  great  expounder  of  natural  rights 
and  liberty,  but  despite  this  academic,  phil 
osophical  interest,  he  seems  to  me  to  have  be 
longed  to  that  group  of  notables  who  felt 
that  the  control  of  government  naturally  be 
longed  in  their  hands  as  the  proper  repre 
sentatives  of  the  masses,  who  on  the  one  side 
he  idealized  and  on  the  other  side  treated  as 
equal  in  their  inferiority. 

The  break  with  this  aristocratic  democ 
racy  came  with  the  expansion  of  the  frontier. 
There  men  found  not  only  individualism  but 
a  self-confidence  which  did  not  brook  the 
idea  that  they  must  let  notable  families  carry 
on  affairs.  To  a  very  large  extent  this  new 
attitude,  which  was  not  that  of  revolt  but, 
rather,  of  self-reliance,  was  the  outcome  of 
new  religious  currents.  To  judge  from  con 
temporary  records  the  religious  life  of  New 
England  and,  in  fact,  the  whole  Atlantic 
seaboard,  was  one  of  eminently  conventional 
respectability.  I  do  not  think  colonial  morals 
were  higher  than  to-day,  but  they  were  dif 
ferent.  There  was,  one  might  say,  a  larger 
sense  of  propriety.  On  the  frontier,  how- 


108          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

ever,  religion  took  on  a  very  much  less  con 
ventional  and  more  direct  sort  of  character. 
New  Light  preachers,  Methodist  itinerants, 
Baptist  evangelists  preached  a  sort  of  gos 
pel  that  was  not  adjusted  to  colonial  meet 
ing  houses  and  the  formalities  of  the  church. 
They  preached  in  log  cabins,  under  the  trees, 
wherever  they  could  get  a  crowd  together. 
Their  preaching  was  not  in  the  cunningly  de 
vised  words  of  Harvard  College  and  Yale 
College,  or  even  in  those  of  the  College  of 
New  Jersey  at  Princeton.  They  preached, 
rather,  the  worth  of  the  human  soul,  the  dan 
gers  that  beset  it,  and  the  possibility  of  im 
mediate  access  to  God.  Apparently,  they 
never  recognized  anything  like  distinction 
in  social  standing.  People  were  all  poor, 
pitting  themselves  against  not  a  too  kindly 
nature,  and  the  little  churches  which  sprang 
up  all  along  the  western  frontier  from  New 
York  to  North  Carolina,  were  filled  with  the 
belief  of  their  own  importance  and  the  per 
sonal  worth  of  their  members.  They  fur 
nished  the  spiritual  motives  for  the  social 
order  that  was  developing  along  the  frontier. 
Patrick  Henry  in  Virginia  was  its  mouth 
piece  and  Jefferson  in  no  small  degree  was 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         109 

its  product.  But  it  took  another  generation 
for  this  popular  movement  with  its  new  con 
sciousness  and  self-reliance  to  be  sufficiently 
widespread  and  relieved  from  the  first  hand- 
to-hand  struggle  with  nature,  to  become  a 
real  power. 

Then  began  the  second  period  in  the  his 
tory  of  American  democracy.  It  was  not 
appreciated  by  the  old  leaders  of  the  coun 
try.  When  popular  democracy  triumphed 
in  the  election  of  Andrew  Jackson  as  Presi 
dent  a  shudder  ran  through  the  nation.  To 
the  notable  families  and  political  leaders  of 
the  Atlantic  seaboard  such  a  transfer  of 
power  seemed  almost  a  revolution.  But  the 
new  democracy  was  true  to  its  inheritance, 
and  never  for  an  instant  undertook  to  neg 
lect  the  Constitution  or  to  attack  those 
fundamental  rights  which  the  development 
of  colonies  had  made  so  complete.  From 
Jackson's  time  on,  an  accredited  leader  has 
usually  been  chosen  by  those  whom  he  is  to 
lead  from  their  own  number  and  not  from 
some  notable  family. 

And  here  we  notice  a  remarkable  fact. 
American  democracy  since  the  days  of  An 
drew  Jackson  has  not  followed  inherited 


110          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

leadership.  It  has  produced  its  own  leaders. 
It  has  had,  so  to  speak,  no  General  Staff. 
It  has  been  under  the  guidance  of  noncom 
missioned  officers  who  have  been  close 
enough  to  their  squads  of  citizens  to  know 
their  will  and  express  it.  Herein  American 
democracy  has  differed  from  the  English, 
with  its  consolidated  race  and  history.  We 
have  no  great  families  who  assume  leadership 
almost  by  heredity.  It  is  only  in  rare  cases 
that  a  father's  name  is  of  any  particular 
service  to  a  young  man  entering  politics. 
The  leaders  of  democracy  work  their  way  up 
through  democracy,  partaking  of  its  weak 
nesses  as  well  as  of  its  strength.  American 
democracy  has  been  a  self-conscious  mass 
movement,  awakened  to  mass  decisions  by 
political  campaigns.  It  has  flowed  around 
obstacles  like  a  huge  amoeba.  Such  conduct 
seems  irrational  to  political  theorists  who 
still  think  a  democracy  must  wait  for  guid 
ance  from  without.  They  lament  the  lack 
of  leaders ;  they  pray  for  leaders ;  every  now 
and  then  they  undertake  to  be  leaders  them 
selves.  But  in  this  attitude  they  are  anach 
ronistic,  the  contemporaries  of  the  fathers 
rather  than  of  the  children.  They  fail  to  see 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         111 

and  trust  the  extraordinary  power  of  Amer 
ican  democracy  to  produce  its  leaders  from 
its  own  tendencies  and  ideals.  In  America 
men  become  leaders  unwittingly.  Better 
than  somebody  else  they  do  something  a  pre 
cinct,  a  party,  a  nation  wants  done.  Men 
gather  about  them  as  long  as  this  represent 
ative  efficiency  continues.  When  it  ceases, 
the  people  turn  to  others  who  can  organize 
new  tendencies,  and  retire  the  outgrown 
leaders  of  their  making  to  whatever  fate 
awaits  them.  The  process  is  relentless,  but 
it  is  the  hope  of  our  land.  We  follow  men 
we  have  produced.  Our  idealism  is  of  our 
own  begetting,  not  of  enforced  adoption. 

This  self -directing  democracy  has  always 
been  true  to  the  fundamental  conception  of 
the  government.  That  is  the  reassuring  fact. 
Never  has  it  undertaken  to  be  unconstitu 
tional.  In  fact,  the  only  serious  attempts 
made  upon  ideals  embodied  in  the  Constitu 
tion  have  been  by  what  might  be  called  the 
privileged  classes.  Such,  for  example,  were 
the  abortive  attempts  of  the  landed  gentry  of 
Kentucky  and  Virginia  in  1798,  of  the  com 
mercial  classes  of  New  England  at  the  time 
of  the  Embargo  Act  in  1814,  and  of  South 


112          THE  VALIDITY  OP 

Carolina,  in  1832,  where  an  attempt  was 
made  to  nullify  the  federal  tariff.  But  the 
mass-sense  of  the  nation  would  have  none  of 
such  policies. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  attitude  of  the 
country  to  revolutionary  France.  It  can  be 
easily  understood  why  the  American  people 
sympathized  greatly  with  the  French  when 
they  deposed  Louis  XVI  and  established  a 
republic.  The  American  people  began  to 
establish  Jacobin  clubs  and  to  profess  wild 
enthusiasm  when  in  1793  France  declared 
war  against  Great  Britain.  In  fact,  the  situ 
ation  which  followed  the  overthrow  of  the 
Czar  by  Russian  revolutionists  was  not  un 
like  that  which  followed  the  triumph  of  the 
Jacobins  in  the  Convention.  The  mission  of 
Mr.  Martens  as  emissary  of  the  Bolshevik 
movement  may  serve  to  interpret  the  early 
days  of  our  national  life.  The  French  revo 
lutionists  attempted  to  capitalize  this  Amer 
ican  sympathy.  A  gentleman  by  the  name 
of  Genet  was  sent  as  minister  to  the  United 
States,  and  with  the  sublime  superiority 
which  revolutionists  have  to  existing  laws 
wherever  found,  he  proceeded  to  fit  out 
privateers.  Washington  promptly  issued  a 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         113 

proclamation  of  neutrality,  and  the  next 
year  Congress  passed  a  Neutrality  Act. 
Whereupon  Citizen  Genet  appealed  to  the 
people  as  against  their  government.  This, 
of  course,  was  little  more  than  an  attempt  to 
spread  the  principles  of  revolution  in  Amer 
ica.  He  had,  of  course,  his  hot-headed  fol 
lowers,  just  as  Bolsheviks  have  their  hot 
headed  followers  to-day,  but  the  Amer 
ican  people  were  not  to  be  stampeded  into 
unconstitutional  hysteria,  and  Citizen  Genet, 
recalled  by  his  government,  retreated  to  an 
American  marriage  and  the  comforts  of  an 
American  home. 

Again  and  again  in  the  history  of  our 
country  have  attempts  been  made  to  stam 
pede  our  democracy  away  from  its  consti- 
tutional  expression.  Very  frequently  such 
efforts  have  taken  the  form  of  some  type  of 
agitation — anti-Catholic,  anti-Chinese  or 
anti-Japanese — by  which  it  has  been  hoped 
to  excite  the  people  to  override  the  govern 
ment.  In  every  case  they  have  failed  and 
American  democracy  has  left  to  its  delegated 
representatives  the  decisions  which  have  to 
be  made.  That  public  opinion  has  swayed 
those  decisions  goes  without  saying.  It 


114          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

would  have  been  unfortunate  if  this  had  not 
been  the  case,  but  until  very  recent  days  de 
mocracy  has  not  regarded  itself  as  possessing 
direct  power  of  action.  Even  in  the  case  of 
later  developments  in  States  where  there  has 
been  a  recall  as  well  as  referendum  and  in 
itiative,  democracy  has  established  through 
its  chosen  representatives  new  methods  for 
orderly  self-expression. 

How  different  from  this  actuality  is  the 
rodomontade  with  which  persons  unac 
quainted  with  American  history,  unaccus 
tomed  to  dealing  with  the  human  element  in 
all  social  action,  assail  the  ears  of  the  ground 
lings!  To  listen  to  some  of  their  exposi 
tions  of  democracy  is  like  listening  to  an 
oration  upon  quadratic  equations.  One  can 
make  a  paper  constitution  as  perfect  as  John 
Locke's  constitution  for  North  Carolina,  but 
unless  in  some  way  it  is  able  to  express  and 
direct  and  respond  to  the  national  mass 
movement  governed  by  public  opinion, 
it  will  be  ineffective.  The  fact  that  our  con 
stitution  is  the  product^  of  the  same. social 
process  that  produced  our  democracy  is  the 
great  reason  why  our  democracy  has  always 
acted  constitutionally. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         115 

Doubtless  the  outstanding  illustration  of 
this  self-directive  idealism  of  the  American 
people  lies  in  the  great  conflict,  already  men 
tioned,  over  slavery.  The  answer  given  by 
the  Civil  War  to  the  attempt  to  recast  the 
original  purposes  of  equality,  liberty,  and 
union  was  not  simply  that  of  the  relative  eco 
nomic  strength  of  geographical  sections.  It 
was  the  outcome  of  the  growth  of  a  truly 
American  conception  of  democracy.  Not 
only  slavery  was  at  stake,  but  the  funda 
mental  conception  of  the  Union  as  a  body 
of  individual  citizens  who  elect  their  repre 
sentatives  from  localities  and  not  from  eco 
nomic  classes.  Had  the  Southern  theory  of 
society  and  of  the  Union  prevailed,  our  re 
public  would  have  revived  the  democracy  of 
the  Greek  states.  A  capitalistic  class  would 
have  constituted  the  democracy  and  have  ul 
timately  built  a  social  order  upon  slaves  and 
free  men  without  property  and  suffrage. 
But  such  reversion  was  prevented. 

With  the  rapid  growth  of  the  population, 
the  nation  entered  a  new  political  period.  A 
new  democracy  spelled  the  end  of  slavery 
and  class  control.  We  have  amended  our 
Constitution  so  that  our  Senators  are  elected 


116          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

by  the  people  instead  of  by  the  Legislatures, 
and  despite  the  fact  that  it  was  instituted  for 
another  purpose,  our  electoral  college  has 
only  seldom  failed  to  reflect  the  will  of  a 
popular  majority. 

This  development  has  a  deeper  signifi 
cance  than  the  immediate  relationship  of  the 
people  with  the  federal  government.  It  has 
solidified  a  political  conception.  While  na 
tions  possessing  the  class  system  have  recog 
nized  a  democracy  based  on  classes,  Amer 
icanism  has  as  its  political  essence  a  union  of 
inseparable  states  which  is  at  the  same  time 
a  democracy  made  up  of  free  men  and 
women.  Every  attempt  at  a  different  sort 
of  political  structure,  whether  it  be  in  Mas 
sachusetts  Bay  or  in  the  South,  has  been 
wiped  away. 

Here  is  a  definite  and  distinct  political 
achievement  born  of  the  undisguised  strug 
gle  with  its  opposite.  It  is  our  contribution 
to  liberty.  On  the  worth  and  permanence 
of  such  a  democracy  we  stake  our  political 
existence. 

Democracy  of  this  American  type  is  a 
great  shock  absorber.  Within  it,  as  within 
an  ocean,  antagonistic  forces  find  themselves 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         117 

stopped  from  producing  results  foretold  by 
the  man  who  deals  with  ideas  rather  than 
folks.  The  human  element  is  one  contribu 
tion  of  American  history  to  political  ideal 
ism.  Social  forces  in  the  United  States  are 
not  working  out  their  result  in  a  vacuum  but 
in  the  midst  of  a  social  order  experienced  in 
the  assimilation  and  restraint  of  conflicting 
groups.  At  the  risk  of  excessive  repetition, 
I  would  again  point  out  that  Continental 
Europe  has  always  differed  from  America 
in  that  it  has  recognized  social  classes  as 
units  in  politics  and  social  adjustments. 
Each  marked  political  change  on  the  Con 
tinent  has  of  necessity  been  a  violent  revo 
lution  in  which  one  of  these  classes  sought  to 
dispossess  the  other  and  reign  in  its  stead. 
Russia  at  the  present  time  is  suffering  from 
a  reversed  autocracy.  The  workingmen  are 
the  autocrats  and  the  autocrats  are  the  work 
ingmen.  The  effect  of  such  revolution  is 
represented  by  a  new  class  of  masters  and  a 
new  class  of  servants.  Individuals  count  no 
more  than  under  the  Czar.  If  there  had  been 
in  Russia  anything  corresponding  to  our 
American  citizenship  accustomed  to  politi 
cal  patience,  the  establishment  of  a  Russian 


118          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

republic  might  have  been  accomplished  in  a 
much  less  sanguinary  fashion. 

It  is  to  this  American  democracy,  born  of 
actual  experiences  in  the  extension  of  ideals, 
that  we  can  confidently  look  for  establishing 
safe  conditions  for  social  reconstruction. 
The  American  people  is  capable  of  extraor 
dinary  surface  agitation,  but  the  deep  cur 
rent  of  its  life  is  that  of  a  representative  de 
mocracy.  However  elusive  may  be  "the  pub 
lic,"  it  includes  all  the  parties  engaged  in 
the  economic  struggle  as  truly  as  those 
who  are  not.  Our  government  represents 
individuals.  The  nearest  approach  to  the 
class  representation  of  the  soviet  system  is 
the  organized  lobby.  And  the  combination 
of  lobby  and  geographical  representation  is 
the  most  successful  experiment  thus  far 
made  in  adjusting  class  interests  to  national 
well-being.  To  make  classes  into  political 
masters  is  to  revert  to  a  theory  the  nineteenth 
century  tried  and  repudiated.  We  are  a  de 
mocracy  of  individuals,  not  of  economic 
classes. 

The  constitutional  struggles  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  show  plainly  the  wholesome 
influence  of  the  national  mind.  It  constitutes 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         119 

an  atmosphere  in  the  midst  of  which  Con 
tinental  political  theories  have  never  flour 
ished.  To  educate  faith  in  our  democracy 
is  our  new  obligation.  Citizenship  must  in 
clude  the  acceptance  of  the  American  con 
victions  as  to  the  state  and  society.  Educa 
tion  cannot  undertake  a  more  imperative 
task  than  the  introduction  of  each  new  gen 
eration  of  native-born  Americans,  as  well  as 
immigrants  from  an  alien  social  order,  into 
that  which  is  genuinely  American.  Such  in 
troduction  is  the  great  task  of  every  educa 
tional  institution. 

The  permanence  of  these  democratic 
ideals,  I  believe,  is  certain,  but  there  still  re 
mains  the  question  as  to  whether  it  can  be 
assured  without  struggle.  The  history  of 
the  nineteenth  century  suggests  caution  as 
to  too-ready  optimism,  but  I  venture  to  say 
that  in  an  educational  process  of  such  vast 
importance  the  American  people  will  not  re 
pudiate  its  past.  We  are  not  engaged  in  a 
political  debate.  We  are  in  deadly  earnest. 
Freedom  of  speech  we  must  unquestionably 
preserve.  Ideas  cannot  be  answered  by  po 
licemen's  clubs.  If  there  are  abuses,  let  us 
be  told  them.  But  freedom  of  speech  does 


120  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

not  mean  loose  talk  and  unrestrained  agita 
tion  to  revolution.  We  cannot  play  as  we 
wage  a  life-and-death  struggle  between  two 
conceptions  of  the  state.  If  such  a  struggle 
is  not  to  result  in  civil  war,  as  may  God  for 
bid,  it  will  be  because  the  American  people 
are  sufficiently  alive  to  the  reality  of  the  is 
sue  as  not  to  mistake  sentimentality  for  lib 
erty.  Freedom  does  not  include  the  duty  of 
American  democracy  to  permit  conspiracy 
against  its  constitutional  foundations.  That 
was  settled  in  the  Civil  War.  The  United 
States  emerged  from  that  terrible  struggle 
not  because  of  Garrison's  condemnation  of 
the  Constitution  as  a  "covenant  with  death 
and  an  agreement  with  hell,"  but  because  of 
the  great  volume  of  human  interest  and  sac 
rifice  which  determined  that  the  Constitution 
should  be  preserved  and  that  individualism 
should  not  be  replaced  by  a  class  govern 
ment.  When  to-day  men  attack  our  form  of 
government  and  the  Constitution  and  our 
democracy,  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  a 
nation,  like  an  individual,  has  a  perfect  right 
to  defend  itself.  There  is  nothing  in  Amer 
ican  history  to  argue  that  democracy  means 
unlimited  opportunity  for  political  suicide, 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         121 

If  men  do  not  like  American  democracy  as 
it  exists  to-day  under  the  Constitution,  it  is 
possible  for  them  to  modify  it  by  constitu 
tional  methods.  If  men  do  not  like  Amer 
ican  democracy  and  attempt  to  change  it  by 
appeal  to  force,  they  may  very  properly  ex 
pect  that,  as  in  1861,  the  country  will  see  to 
it  that  their  plans  for  revolution  will  be 
checked.  If  aliens  wish  to  attack  the  consti 
tutional  institutions  of  a  nation  to  which  they 
do  not  belong,  they  have  no  right  to  complain 
if  that  nation  after  preserving  its  political 
unity  and  democracy  by  its  own  blood,  sends 
them  and  their  Utopias  back  to  lands  where 
Utopias  seem  greatly  needed.  American 
democracy  is  no  child  of  political  dilettanti 
and  does  not  hold  itself  as  the  sport  of  a 
world  madness. 

If  our  democracy  is  self -directing,  if  it 
does  not  wait  for  self-appointed  leaders,  if 
it  must  and  can  act  for  itself,  if  it  is  too  great 
for  any  single  leader,  it  must  be  possessed  of 
a  unity  of  spirit.  And  this  spirit  America 
has.  A  Bismarck  can  make  an  empire,  but 
a  democracy  is  its  own  maker.  It  will  not 
act  until  it  acts  in  accordance  with  its  own 
inner  spirit.  It  has  mouthpieces  and  inter- 


122          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

preters,  but  it  bows  to  no  master.  America 
is  its  own  inner  mentor.  Out  from  free  dis 
cussion  comes  its  programs;  from  its  own 
spirit  comes  its  prophets ;  from  its  education 
comes  its  leaders.  We  look  to  our  democracy 
to  make  safe  its  own  future  by  educating  its 
mighty  present. 

Standing  as  we  do  at  the  beginning  of  a 
new  epoch,  already  experiencing  the  antag 
onism  of  conflicting  groups  and  ideals,  we 
are  in  truth  successors  to  those  who  made  the 
democracy  we  have  inherited.  We  honor 
them  as  fathers  and  teachers,  but  our  noblest 
loyalty  will  be  shown  in  our  adherence  to  the 
great  ideals  of  individuality,  liberty,  union, 
and  democracy  for  which  they  shed  their 
blood.  Their  spirit  lives  in  our  hopes,  and 
their  experience  in  our  institutions.  If  they 
could  speak  to  us  they  would  bid  us  avoid 
their  mistakes,  but  not  to  fear  to  carry  fur 
ther  their  accomplishments.  They  have  be 
queathed  us  a  democracy  of  individuals.  It 
is  ours  to  make  it  a  democracy  of  brothers. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          123 

LECTURE  IV 
THE  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION 

ONE  of  the  most  significant  contributions 
made  by  American  political  experience  to 
modern  life  is  the  written  Constitution.  If 
we  go  back  to  1776,  we  shall  discover  a  world 
not  only  little  concerned  about  constitutional 
monarchy,  but  without  any  serious  attempt 
at  organizing  the  principles  of  government 
into  a  written  instrument.  Great  Britain 
had  then,  as  now,  an  unwritten  constitution 
made  up  of  the  various  acts  of  Parliament 
and  decisions  of  courts  controlled  by  general 
rights  formulated  in  such  documents  as 
Magna  Carta,  the  Petition  of  Rights,  and 
the  Bill  of  Rights.  But  no  country,  if  we 
make  possible  exception  of  Holland,  had 
attempted  to  reduce  to  a  written  statement 
the  general  principles  upon  which  states  were 
to  be  founded  and  to  which  citizens  and  gov 
ernments  were  to  conform.  I  do  not  need  to 
remind  you  that,  despite  certain  recent  ten 
dencies,  a  constitution  differs  markedly  from 
a  statute  in  that  it  delimits  the  field  within 
which  statutes  must  be  made.  It  organizes 


124          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

the  general  principles  to  which  the  entire 
state  must  conform  and  does  not  attempt  to 
deal  with  specific  matters.  In  a  sense  it  may 
be  said  to  be  a  formal  expression  of  what  a 
nation  demands  its  government  shall  regard 
as  its  field  of  action.  It  thus  protects  the 
freedom  of  the  individual  by  limiting  ex 
pressly  the  powers  of  government.  Demo 
cratic  government  in  accord  with  a  written 
constitution  adopted  by  individual  citizens 
is  the  third  of  our  great  American  ideals. 


This  ideal,  like  individualism  and  democ 
racy,  was  the  product  of  a  long  experience 
in  politics.  Like  them,  too,  it  is  rooted  in 
English  history. 

With  the  exception  of  England,  the  seven 
teenth  century  resigned  itself  to  absolute 
monarchy.  According  to  the  piety  of  the 
monarch,  this  absolutism  was  believed  to  be 
founded  upon  the  divine  rights  of  kings. 
Louis  XIV  was  the  brilliant  representative 
of  this  conception  of  the  state.  Whether  he 
actually  used  the  famous  expression, 
"L'etat,  c'est  moil"  may  be  left  to  the  mercy 
of  doctors'  theses,  but  the  saying  expresses 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          125 

precise  political  fact.  The  Stuarts  under 
took  to  carry  forward  this  same  conception 
of  the  state  in  England,  but  with  disastrous 
results  to  Charles  I  and  James  II.  The 
spirit  of  Protestantism  is  increasingly  hos 
tile  to  any  type  of  irresponsible  control,  and 
when,  as  in  England,  this  impatience  is 
joined  to  Scotch  Presbyterianism,  results 
are  very  apt  to  follow.  True,  the  Civil  War 
in  England  did  not  result  in  the  abolition  of 
the  monarchy  or  in  the  establishment  of  a 
government  in  any  sense  comparable  with 
the  English  democracy  of  to-day.  None  the 
less,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  constitu 
tional  government  was  to  gain  impetus.  For 
English  absolutism  in  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury  was  one  cause  of  the  great  migration 
of  well-to-do  Englishmen  to  America. 

The  Puritans  who  settled  in  Massachu 
setts  and  in  Connecticut  were  of  substantial 
means  and  with  a  good  cultural  background. 
They  brought  to  the  task  of  pioneering  edu 
cational  ideals  as  well  as  practical  experi 
ence  in  business,  church,  and  politics.  They 
belonged  to  a  much  larger  party  of  English 
men  who  favored  a  responsible  government. 
The  party  struggles  of  the  seventeenth  and 


126          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

eighteenth  centuries  make  it  plain  that  great 
bodies  of  Englishmen  who  did  not  migrate 
were  the  equals  of  the  colonists  in  devotion 
to  political  liberty  and  constitutional  gov 
ernment.  The  conditions,  however,  which 
were  set  up  in  colonial  life  hastened  the  de 
velopment  of  political  ideals  which  the  so 
cial  structure  and  inertia  of  the  mother  coun 
try  made  difficult. 

Particularly  is  this  true  in  the  case  of  con 
stitution  making.  Men  living  together  un 
der  new  conditions  seem  to  turn  naturally  to 
written  compacts  rather  than  to  gentlemen's 
agreements.  Circumstances  in  which  our 
forefathers  found  themselves  forced  ap 
proval  of  this  method,  but,  like  so  many  other 
things  in  our  history,  the  written  Constitu 
tion  was  not  their  out-and-out  invention. 
They  had  certain  precedents  which  must 
always  have  suggested  development.  First 
and  foremost,  there  was  of  course  Magna 
Carta,  with  which  every  Englishman  was  fa 
miliar  and  the  sentences  of  which  were  the 
very  bulwark  of  English  liberties.  But 
there  were  other  documents  with  which  the 
American  Constitution  makers  of  the  eigh 
teenth  century  were  familiar.  There  was, 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         127 

for  instance,  the  Petition  of  Rights  of  1628 
— mostly  concerned  with  military  oppres 
sion,  but  also  providing  that  there  should  be 
no   imprisonment   except   upon   a   specific 
charge.    Other  Petitions  were  so  important 
as  to  be  among  the  foundations  of  the  mod 
ern  constitutional  monarchy  of   England. 
There  was,  too,  that  most  interesting  Instru 
ment  of  Cromwell  in  which  he  set  forth  the 
general  plan  of  government  which  he  hoped 
to  develop  for  the  Commonwealth.    It  never 
had  any  great  influence  in  English  history, 
but  it  is  at  least  an  indication  that  as  early  as 
1653  the  idea  of  a  written  constitution  which 
was  to  be  the  test  of  executive  and  legisla 
tive  action  was  already  in  the  minds  of  Eng 
lishmen.    In  1689  William  and  Mary  were 
declared  "King  and  Queen  of  Great  Brit 
ain,  Ireland  and  France,"  subject  to  a  Dec 
laration  of  Rights  which  limited  royal  ab 
solutism  and  settled  the  succession  to  the 
crown,  and  at  the  close  of  the  same  year  a 
Parliamentary  Bill  of  Rights  reaffirmed  and 
further  limited  the  conditions  contained  in 
the  earlier  act.    In  1701,  by  the  Act  of  Set 
tlement,  the  succession  of  the  crown  and 
royal  powers  were  still  further  defined. 


128          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

But  more  important  for  the  development 
of  the  American  leaning  to  a  written  consti 
tution  were  undoubtedly  the  Charters  in  ac 
cordance  with  which  the  colonies  themselves 
were  administered.  Every  colony  had  some 
such  fundamental  instrument  fixing  its  re 
lation  to  the  crown.  In  some  cases  it  was  an 
express  instrument  of  powers  of  self-govern 
ment  which  the  colony  could  exercise.  In 
other  cases  it  was  a  charter  granted  to  some 
trading  company  which  in  turn  granted 
rights  and  prescribed  conditions  to  the  col 
onies.  In  the  course  of  time,  however,  these 
charters  all  emerged  from  the  crown,  so  that 
self-government  under  terms  stated  by  a 
written  document  was  familiar  to  the  col 
onies.  The  local  affairs  of  the  colonies  un 
der  these  charters  were  carried  on  by  repre 
sentative  bodies  of  various  names.  Thus  an 
other  element  of  the  American  democracy 
was  in  process  of  development.  Colonial 
governments  were  fundamentally  constitu 
tional  in  germ. 

II 

The  Mayflower  Compact  naturally  occurs 
to  us  as  the  first  of  the  strictly  American  an- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         129 

cestors  of  our  many  constitutions.  And,  in 
deed,  it  was  to  prove  of  very  great  impor 
tance — the  nearest  approach  which  we  have 
to  that  hypothetical  social  compact  which 
played  such  a  role  in  the  political  thought  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  Strictly  speaking, 
it  was  not  the  constitution  of  a  new  state  but, 
rather,  an  agreement  of  individuals  to  main 
tain  loyalty  to  their  English  king  and  to  live 
together  under  certain  conditions.  The  ef 
fect  of  this  Compact,  drawn  by  a  few 
weather-beaten  Pilgrims  in  the  tiny  cabin  of 
an  unbelievably  small  vessel,  was  to  be  felt 
widely  throughout  the  northern  migration  in 
the  later  periods.  Straight  across  the  conti 
nent  in  the  latitude  of  New  England,  and 
also  in  some  other  localities,  you  will  find 
towns  established  in  the  way  of  the  Pilgrims. 
The  settlers  accept  an  agreement,  sign  it, 
and  live  by  it.  In  such  political  action  one 
can  see  the  true  nature  of  our  Constitution. 
For,  although  the  small  number  of  persons  in 
these  new  towns  permitted  each  man  to  sign 
the  agreement  in  the  presence  of  his  fellows, 
strictly  speaking  these  compacts  were  no 
more  adopted  by  the  individuals  themselves 
than  was  the  Constitution  of  the  United 


130          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

States.  The  people,  and  not  the  state  gov 
ernment,  adopted  the  Constitution  through 
conventions.  Thus,  in  very  truth,  every  man 
who  becomes  a  citizen  agrees  to  live  by  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  He  is 
not  dependent  upon  general  ideas  as  to  what 
is  right  or  upon  successive  legislative  acts, 
but  upon  that  conception  of  government 
which  the  Constitution  of  his  nation  pre 
scribes  and  he  accepts. 

I  call  attention  to  this  fact  here  because 
there  is  much  loose  talk  abroad  which  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  one  has  a  constitutional 
right  to  act  as  if  there  were  no  Constitution. 
But  such  a  view  is  contrary  to  the  very  es 
sence  of  our  national  ideal.  A  constitution 
is  not  superimposed  upon  the  people  any 
more  than  was  the  Mayflower  Compact.  It 
is  a  general  statement  as  to  the  rules  of  the 
game  of  American  citizenship.  We  can 
change  it — but  until  it  is  changed,  we  have 
no  right  to  live  contrary  to  it. 

Long  before  these  town  covenants,  how 
ever,  what  was  probably  the  first  real  con 
stitution  which  America,  and  possibly  the 
world,  ever  saw  appeared  in  the  Organic 
Articles  of  Connecticut  drawn  up  and 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         131 

adopted  in  1639.  They  organize  the  ideal 
of  a  representative  government  and  make 
plain  the  limitations  as  well  as  the  powers  of 
the  state.  It  is  worth  noticing,  also,  that  one 
of  the  most  complete  expositions  of  the 
theory  of  the  written  Constitution  and  of  the 
state  is  set  forth  in  a  sermon  preached  by 
Hooker  just  prior  to  the  adoption  of  the 
Articles.  And  I  do  not  need  to  remind  you 
that  so  thoroughly  and  prophetically  Amer 
ican  was  that  conception  that  Connecticut 
saw  little  need  of  changing  the  provisions  of 
this  ancient  document  when  it  became  a 
State  of  the  Union. 

This  action  of  Connecticut  was  followed  in 
1641  by  the  Body  of  Liberties  adopted  by 
the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts,  and  in 
1643  there  was  formed  the  confederation 
known  as  the  United  Colonies  of  New  Eng 
land,  with  terms  also  contained  in  a  written 
instrument. 

The  conception  of  a  Constitution  as  a  com 
pact  between  citizens  was  given  color  by  the 
philosophy  of  Locke,  which  was  popular  in 
the  American  colonies.  Indeed,  he  had 
drawn  up  a  Constitution  for  the  Carolinas  in 
1669,  although  it  was  never  adopted  and  as 


132          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

a  matter  of  fact  did  not  emphasize  his  phil 
osophy.  In  1682  a  Frame  of  Government 
was  drawn  up  by  William  Penn  as  a  basis 
for  organizing  his  colony.  In  1772  the  citi 
zens  of  Boston  resolved  that  "the  common 
wealth  is  a  body  politic  or  civil  society  of 
men  united  together  to  promote  their  mutual 
safety  and  prosperity  by  their  union."  An 
examination  of  the  Constitutions  of  the  thir 
teen  colonies  will  disclose  constant  repetition 
of  this  conception  of  compact.  Probably  the 
most  striking  illustrations  are  the  constitu 
tions  of  Massachusetts  and  Virginia.  But 
everywhere  we  get  the  American  conception 
of  a  constitution  as  an  instrument  for  codify 
ing  and  maintaining  the  rights  of  the  people 
from  the  oppression  of  the  government. 
They  not  only  establish  representative  gov 
ernment,  but  limit  its  employment  of  its  rep 
resentative  powers. 

In  some  cases  these  constitutions  are  pref 
aced  by  a  Declaration  of  Rights.  We  can 
say  truthfully  that  these  Declarations  of 
Rights  are  an  American  improvement  upon 
the  Bills  of  Rights  and  Petitions  of  Rights 
and  even  the  Declaration  of  Rights  of  the 
mother  country.  They  are  the  outcome  al- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          133 

most  exclusively  of  the  church  life  of  the 
New  England  colonies.  As  I  have  already 
pointed  out  they  served  as  models  for  the 
Declarations  of  Rights  of  the  French  Revo 
lution,  but  their  idealism  is  not  that  of  ab 
stract  philosophy.  Rather  it  springs  from 
religious  conviction  given  direction  and  con 
trol  by  political  experience.  Whether  or  not 
these  Declarations  are  prefixed  to  the  various 
constitutions  of  the  States,  they  are  none  the 
less  involved  therein.  Such  a  Declaration 
was  prefixed  to  the  Articles  of  Confedera 
tion,  but  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  was  omitted.  The  first  nine  amend 
ments  to  the  Constitution,  however,  may  be 
said  to  be  a  statement  of  rights  which  had  not 
been  definitely  asserted  in  the  Constitution 
itself.  These  amendments  were  adopted 
practically  without  discussion  as  expressing 
the  ideals  which  everybody  held.  The  sepa 
ration  of  church  and  state  is  perhaps  the 
most  advanced  of  these  rights  when  com 
pared  with  the  ecclesiastical  situation  in 
other  countries.  The  others  may  all  be  found 
at  least  in  germ  in  the  constitutional  life  of 
England  itself. 

This  simple  fact  in  itself  is  eloquent  of  the 


134  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

entirely  practical  mood  of  mind  from  which 
the  American  Constitution  sprang.  It  was 
not  the  charting  of  an  untraveled  sea.  It 
was,  rather,  the  projection  of  well-worn 
paths.  What  had  worked  was  to  work. 
What  experience  had  favored,  experience 
was  to  carry  forward.  French  reform  in 
1789  became  revolution  in  1792  very  largely 
because  men  inexperienced  in  constitutional 
government  undertook  to  lay  down  funda 
mental  general  principles  from  which  they 
could  deduce  a  constitution.  While  they 
were  discussing  a  Declaration  of  the  Rights 
of  Man  and  the  Citizen,  human  passions 
swept  beyond  them  so  that  their  constitution 
was  moribund  as  soon  as  it  was  born.  The 
American  colonies  had  practiced  rights. 
They  did  not  stop  to  discuss  them  until 
after  they  had  focused  their  experiences  in 
an  instrument  of  government.  Political  the 
ory  was  the  child  of  political  practice. 

This  practical  idealism  appeared  also  in 
the  discussion  which  sprang  up  around  the 
Constitution  after  its  adoption.  The  point 
at  issue  was  not  social  theory,  abstract  de 
mocracy,  or,  in  fact,  anything  abstract. 
What  the  American  people  chose  was  what 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         135 

they  saw  in  many  cases  was  the  lesser  of  two 
evils.  Any  sort  of  constitution  that  could 
bring  about  an  actual  union  between  the 
States  was  better  than  the  anarchy  toward 
which  the  country  was  drifting.  But  order 
was  to  come  from  delegated  powers.  The 
American  Revolution  had  been  based  on  the 
belief  that  Parliament  was  violating  funda 
mental  laws  and  natural  rights.  The  new 
federal  government,  as  far  as  possible,  was  to 
be  made  incapable  of  any  such  unconstitu 
tional  action. 

Thus  the  task  which  our  constitutional 
forbears  faced  was  unprecedented,  but  they 
were  not  without  suitable  experience.  In 
shaping  up  government  by  means  of  a  writ 
ten  instrument,  the  American  colonists  were 
following  a  course  of  action  with  which  they 
were  already  acquainted  and  which  had  al 
ready  justified  itself  in  the  protection  of  the 
rights  and  liberties  of  Englishmen.  It  is 
only  what  might  be  expected  that,  having 
once  undertaken  to  build  a  government  with 
power,  the  American  colonists  should  be 
anxious  lest  they  should  give  it  too  much 
power.  Our  Constitution  is  a  formulation 
of  structural  law,  a  protection  of  the  liberty 


136          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

which  the  individual  already  possessed  as 
truly  as  it  was  the  creator  of  a  government. 

Ill 

It  has  of  late  been  argued  that  our  written 
Constitution  is  too  rigid;  that  it  would  be 
better  for  the  American  people  if  it  had  a 
Constitution  susceptible  of  easier  amend 
ment.  "Why,"  it  is  asked,  "should  our  an 
cestors  control  our  action?"  Such  criticism 
is  based  largely  upon  the  sufficiency  and 
success  of  the  British  constitution,  which  is 
not  a  written  document.  In  my  opinion, 
such  criticism,  while  not  without  plausibility, 
is  unjustified.  The  various  Commonwealths 
which  compose  the  British  Empire  have  all 
adopted  written  constitutions,  and  there  is 
a  fair  question  as  to  the  precise  accuracy  of 
the  statement  that  the  British  constitution  is 
beyond  documentary  control.  But  quite 
apart  from  such  considerations,  the  United 
States  would  certainly  have  been  in  chaos 
long  ago  if  it  had  not  possessed  a  written 
Constitution  which  could  give  permanency 
of  government  to  millions  of  naturalized  citi 
zens  unaccustomed  to  democracy.  Herein 
we  markedly  differ  from  a  homogeneous  na- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          137 

tion  with  the  inhibitions  and  guidance  of  ex 
perience  like  England.  Again  and  again  has 
our  country  been  saved  from  hasty,  and  what 
might  have  proved  fatal  innovations  by  the 
simple  fact  that  because  we  have  a  written 
Constitution  changes  are  not  matters  of 
opinion  and  policies  but  of  law.  Proposed 
changes  to  the  Constitution  already  number 
several  thousand.  Many  of  these  might 
have  become  operative  had  it  not  been  for 
the  necessary  delay  which  the  process  of 
amending  the  Constitution  necessitates. 

But  such  criticism  of  our  Constitution  as  a 
safeguard  of  democracy  is  not  widespread. 
In  talking  with  almost  any  American  who  is 
not  addicted  to  theoretical  politics  you  will 
discover  that  he  respects  the  Constitution 
even  more  than  the  government.  It  is  the 
Constitution,  or,  if  I  may  be  permitted  to 
coin  a  word,  it  is  the  constitutionism  that  he 
would  preserve.  He  is  ready  to  change  the 
Constitution,  but  it  must  be  changed  in  ac 
cordance  with  its  own  proviso;  and  so  it  has 
really  come  to  pass  that  the  innermost  sanc 
tity  of  American  political  life  is  not  ab 
stract  democracy  or  liberty,  but  the  Consti 
tution,  which  makes  possible  liberty,  govern- 


138          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

ment  among  equals,  and  constitutional 
changes  without  revolution.  Foreign  critics 
of  our  institutions  usually  see  this  but  with 
out  always  justly  appreciating  it.  We 
Americans  understand  it  because  we  see  in 
our  Constitution  something  more  than  a 
theoretical  exposition  of  abstract  principles. 
It  is  the  codification  of  workable  idealism  de 
rived  from  generations  of  experience.  It 
formulates  rules  for  playing  on  a  larger 
scale  a  game  already  understood. 

Two  facts  are  suggested  by  this  considera 
tion  of  rigidity  in  our  Constitution.  In  the 
first  place,  the  Constitution,  although  a  doc 
ument,  has  in  the  course  of  national  expan 
sion  become  in  reality  something  not  alto 
gether  unlike  the  British  constitution.  This 
has  come  about  constitutionally  by  the  pas 
sage  of  acts  by  Congress  which,  although 
widely  extending  certain  grants  of  power  to 
the  federal  government,  have  been  pro 
nounced  constitutional  by  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States.  The  judge  and 
the  legislator  have  been  not  only  guardians 
but  reinterpreters  of  the  Constitution.  One 
might  almost  say  that  we  have  remade  our 
nation  by  a  broad  interpretation  of  the  sen- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          139 

tence  giving  the  federal  government  con 
trol  of  interstate  commerce.  No  one  can  for 
a  moment  believe  that  legislation  like  that 
dealing  with  child  labor,  pure  foods,  safety 
devices  on  freight  trains  was  specifically  in 
the  minds  of  the  makers  of  the  Constitution. 
But  conditions  in  1789  gave  rise  to  general 
formulas,  capable  of  varied  application. 
Among  them  was  the  necessity  that  the  fed 
eral  government  rather  than  that  of  the  sepa 
rate  States  should  control  commerce  between 
the  States.  This  organic  principle  has  been 
extended  by  legislation  and  judicial  decision 
in  accordance  with  its  spirit  rather  than  with 
its  details.  Our  actual  working  Constitu 
tion  has  grown  with  the  growth  of  the  na 
tion,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  it  has 
been  formally  amended  only  eighteen  times. 
Statesmen  like  Webster,  jurists  like  Mar 
shall  have  almost  as  much  claim  as  the  mem 
bers  of  the  Constitutional  Convention  to  be 
numbered  among  the  fathers  of  the  Con 
stitution. 

There  are  important  fields  in  which  this 
development  of  the  Constitution  is  still  in 
process,  as,  for  example,  the  power  of  the 
executive;  but  so  thoroughly  ingrained  is 


140          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

respect  for  the  Constitution  and  so  effective 
are  the  various  checks  in  government  which 
it  has  embodied,  that  these  elaborations  of 
its  principles  by  which  the  more  complicated 
life  of  our  day  is  brought  within  its  jurisdic 
tion  will  continue  to  be  an  expanding  in 
terpretation  of  its  paragraphs. 

That  there  are  dangers  incident  to  this 
more  or  less  surreptitious  amending,  or,  if 
the  word  be  preferred,  expanding  of  the 
Constitution,  cannot  be  denied.  The  rapid 
extension  of  federal  powers  by  court  de 
cisions  during  the  past  quarter  of  a  century 
has  undoubtedly  resulted  from  a  belief  that 
formal  amendments  to  the  same  effect  would 
have  been  impossible.  Much  of  this  new  leg 
islation  springs  from  an  entirely  different 
conception  of  our  federal  government  than 
that  held  by  the  makers  of  the  Constitution. 
Some  social  reform — like  the  regulation  of 
child  labor,  the  maintenance  of  pure  food, 
the  protection  of  railway  employees,  the  con 
trol  of  railway  charges,  the  curbing  of  com 
mercialized  vice — becomes  a  matter  of  gen 
eral  policy.  Its  efficiency  depends  upon  a 
uniformity  of  provision  impossible  if  sought 
in  the  legislation  of  the  various  States.  Pub- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         141 

lie  opinion  demands  nation-wide  legislation. 
Congress  passes  the  necessary  laws  and  the 
Supreme  Court  finds  them  in  accord  with 
some  clause  of  the  Constitution  broadly  in 
terpreted.  Has  such  a  process  any  limits? 
Would  it  not  be  more  honest  to  amend  the 
Constitution  frankly  giving  Congress  such 
powers?  So  it  is  occasionally  argued  and 
the  argument  is  not  to  be  ignored.  But 
whether  or  not  this  new  revision  of  the  Con 
stitution  is  strictly  logical,  even  if  in  some 
measure  it  may  seem  to  partake  of  national 
self-deception,  it  is  the  way  American  po 
litical  development  is  proceeding.  And 
after  all  allowances  have  been  made,  it  has 
in  its  favor  the  fact  that  it  maintains  caution 
and  continuity.  In  its  light  the  charge  that 
we  are  slaves  to  an  outgrown  document 
seems  trivial.  A  constitution  drawn  as 
wisely  as  our  own  permits  a  conservative  but 
constant  adjustment  of  our  democracy  by 
progressive  legislation  to  new  social  condi 
tions. 

The  second  fact  to  be  noted  is  that  the 
amendments  to  the  Constitution  have  always 
been  in  the  interest  of  the  extension  of  rights. 
No  reactionary  amendment  has  ever  been 


142  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

adopted.  The  Constitution  has  shown  itself 
capable  of  change  by  prescribed  means  just 
as  soon  as  a  general  public  opinion  has  come 
to  feel  that  new  fundamental  ideals  have 
grown  into  national  folkways.  Thus  slavery 
was  abolished,  suffrage  has  been  extended, 
senators  have  been  elected  by  public  vote, 
an  income  tax  has  been  permitted,  the  power 
of  the  liquor  traffic  to  injure  society  has  been 
restricted.  Every  one  of  these  amendments 
represents  a  definite  extension  of  fundamen 
tal  idealism  upon  which  our  national  life  is 
built.  Not  one  of  them  looks  toward  the  de 
velopment  of  class  consciousness  or  class  con 
trol.  The  welfare  of  the  individual  is  para 
mount.  The  fact  that  constitutional  amend 
ments  do  thus  breed  true  to  a  fundamental 
purpose  of  democracy  is  a  tremendous  argu 
ment  for  the  validity,  not  only  of  the  various 
provisions  of  the  Constitution,  but  of  the 
very  conception  of  constitutionalism  itself. 

There  are  no  limits  to  which  these  amend 
ments  can  go  provided  only  they  are  adopted 
according  to  constitutional  methods.  It  is 
the  method  of  amendment  that  is  funda 
mental,  not  the  type  of  the  amendment.  If 
the  constitutional  number  of  the  States 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          143 

wishes  to  have  an  amendment  establishing 
some  different  form  of  government — monar 
chical,  socialistic,  communistic,  or  what  not 
— there  is  nothing  in  the  Constitution  to  pre 
vent  such  amendments  from  being  adopted 
and  the  government  being  changed.  But  an 
attempt  to  change  the  government  in  any 
other  than  constitutional  ways  is  revolution. 
The  Declaration  of  Independence  expressly 
recognizes  the  right  of  revolution,  but  it 
does  not  undertake  to  say  that  revolution  is 
constitutional.  When  certain  extremists 
plead  the  constitutional  right  to  freedom  of 
speech  to  agitate  a  revolution  they  seem  to 
me  to  lack  a  sense  of  humor. 

IV 

Thus  it  will  appear  that  the  Constitution 
is  not  something  apart  from  democracy  or 
individualism.  It  is  one  phase  of  what  might 
be  called  a  composite  ideal.  And  so  is  it  re 
garded.  The  American  respect  for  the  Con 
stitution  is  not  bibliolatry,  but  is  due  to  our 
belief  that  it  embodies  our  conception  as  to 
what  the  state  should  be.  And  this  ideal  of  a 
state  so  organized  that  it  knows  from  a  writ 
ten  document  the  limitations  and  powers  of 


144          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

a  representative  government  established  for 
the  purpose  of  guarding  the  freedom  of  indi 
viduals,  is  guaranteed  by  two  outstanding 
facts. 

First :  It  has  made  a  permanent  govern 
ment.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the 
United  States  was  an  unprecedented  ven 
ture  in  politics,  at  the  present  time,  with  the 
exception  of  Great  Britain  and  Turkey,  its 
government  is  the  oldest  of  all  existing 
states.  Such  stability  was  not  expected  by 
observers  in  the  eighteenth  century.  It 
seemed  incredible  that  there  should  not  arise 
in  the  United  States  as  in  older  countries 
some  family  that  would  become  royal.  The 
likelihood  of  disintegration  of  the  state  and 
consequent  collapse  of  anything  like  govern 
ment  was  argued  from  the  fate  of  the  gov 
ernment  erected  under  the  Articles  of  Con 
federation,  and  the  tempting  of  political 
Providence  by  offering  full  citizenship  to  im 
migrants.  Since  the  barbarian  invasion  of 
the  Roman  Empire  there  has  been  no  such 
mingling  of  nations  as  there  is  daily  on  the 
American  continent.  That  in  the  face  of 
these  conditions  stability  of  government 
should  be  so  marked  is  a  reassurance  in  a 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         145 

period  of  transition  like  our  own.  As  a  na 
tion,  we  have  left  undone  those  things  that 
we  ought  to  have  done,  and  we  have  done 
those  things  that  we  ought  not  to  have  done, 
but  there  is  health  in  us. 

Second:  Testimony  to  the  validity  of  our 
constitutional  ideal  is  to  be  seen  in  world  his 
tory.  The  entire  course  of  political  history 
since  1779  has  been  corroborative  of  the 
American  constitutionalism.  No  sooner  had 
this  conception  of  a  government  under  a  con 
stitution  been  realized  on  our  shores  than  it 
became  contagious.  The  history  of  the  world 
since  1776  has  been  the  record  of  the  slow  in 
filtration  of  all  politics  with  the  American 
conception  of  the  state  as  a  free  citizenship 
electing  its  governors  in  accordance  with  a 
constitution.  It  passed  into  France.  Many 
liberal  Frenchmen  had  fought  in  the  Amer 
ican  Revolution.  In  the  success  of  the 
American  colonies  they  saw  the  possibility 
of  establishing  a  French  state  in  which  the 
rights  of  men  should  be  the  basis  of  a  con 
stitutional  government.  And  they  brought 
to  France  this  assurance  of  the  success  of 
democracy. 

England  followed,  and  in  the  course  of 


146          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

forty  years  Englishmen,  with  characteristic 
caution  and  their  ability  to  readjust  privi 
leges,  passed  the  various  Reform  Bills,  and, 
although  they  adopted  no  formal  instrument 
of  government,  developed  a  democracy  with 
the  same  basis  as  that  of  the  United  States 
— that  is,  a  citizenship  electing  a  responsible 
government.  Of  course  the  British  have  a 
king,  but  there  are  two  Georges  in  England 
at  the  present  time — the  greatly  loved 
George  V  and  the  son  of  a  Welsh  school 
master,  Lloyd  George.  It  is  the  second 
George  who  is  the  active  governor  of  the 
kingdom. 

This  conception  of  a  state  based  upon  the 
rights  of  men,  in  which  the  administrators 
under  the  terms  of  a  constitution  are  respon 
sible  to  the  people,  colored  the  hope  of 
Europe  during  the  first  half  of  the  nine 
teenth  century.  But  except  in  Great  Brit 
ain  and  in  France  it  was  everywhere  re 
pressed.  In  Prussia,  the  conception  of  a 
state  that  recognized  no  power  and  right  of 
citizens  to  express  themselves  in  their  own 
government  was  enforced  by  every  type  of 
censorship  and  proscription  and  military 
power.  The  sinister  influence  in  Europe  for 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          147 

thirty-five  years  after  Napoleon  was  Metter- 
nich  of  Austria,  and  he  looked  at  the  govern 
ment  of  England  as  one  to  be  avoided  by  all 
the  monarchs  of  Europe.     Frederick  Wil 
liam  III  of  Prussia  followed  in  the  wake  of 
Austria.    His  people  wanted  a  constitution, 
and  they  were  promised  it  again  and  again. 
The  people  of  southern  Germany  wanted 
constitutions,  and  they  got  them — Bavaria 
and  Baden  in  1818,  Wurtemburg  in  1819, 
Hesse-Darmstadt  in  1819.     Saxony  gained 
a  constitution  so  liberal  that  it  became  almost 
a  "red  kingdom,"  until  Prussia  forced  Sax 
ons  to  adopt  a  constitution  of  the  Prussian 
sort.      But    Prussia    stood    like    Gibraltar 
against  constitutional  government.     When 
Frederick  William  III  died  and  his  son, 
the  affable  Frederick  William  IV,  came  to 
the  throne,  he  refused  to  give  a  constitution, 
uttering  words  which  sound  strangely  like 
some  recently  spoken,  "Never  will  I  let  a 
sheet  of  written  paper  come  like  a  second 
Providence    between    our    Lord    God    in 
heaven  and  the  land,  to  govern  us  by  its 
paragraphs." 

In  1848  a  new  wave  of  constitutionalism 
swept  over  Europe.    It  was  the  work  of  the 


148          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

grandchildren  of  the  earlier  agitators,  and 
it  was  stronger  than  that  of  the  grandfathers. 
The  revolution  of  1848  in  France  expressed 
the  undercurrent  of  the  democracy  that  was 
working  through  all  Europe.  France  has 
ever  manfully  sought  to  maintain  its  repub 
lic.  Governments  have  been  pushed  aside 
time  and  again  by  some  coup  d'etat;  but  in 
1848  this  persistent  loyalty  to  constitutional 
government  expressed  itself  anew,  and  with 
greater  powers.  The  king  was  thrust  out 
and  the  new  republic  of  France  was  estab 
lished.  A  short-lived  republic,  to  be  sure, 
soon  to  go  down  at  the  hands  of  Napoleon 
III,  but  nevertheless,  an  illustration  of  the 
new  spirit.  The  movement  swept  across 
Europe  to  Austria,  and  it  dislodged  Metter- 
nich  himself,  forcing  him  to  flee  to  England 
and  safety. 

You  know  the  extension  of  constitutional 
government  in  the  second  half  of  the  nine 
teenth  century:  how  nation  after  nation 
adopted  written  constitutions,  and  how  in 
those  constitutions,  with  ever-increasing  em 
phasis,  the  government  was  made  responsible 
to  the  citizens.  You  can  see  this  develop 
ment  in  France,  in  the  Scandinavian  coun- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          149 

tries,  in  Belgium,  Spain,  Italy  and  Portu 
gal,  in  Japan  and  China.  In  fact,  the  only 
great  states  that  had  not  yielded  to  the  im 
pulse  in  1914  were  Prussia,  Austria,  Turkey, 
and  Russia.  To-day  Turkey  alone  of  these 
four  nations  is  a  monarchy. 

Democracy  spread  into  Russia.  In 
1815  at  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  when  the 
kings  of  Europe  were  gathered  to  dismember 
the  Napoleonic  conquests,  the  little  republic 
of  Genoa  was  tossed  off  to  some  king.  Its 
representative  came  to  the  Czar  and  pro 
tested  that  a  republic  should  not  be  so 
treated.  The  Czar  said,  "Republics  are  no 
longer  fashionable!"  A  hundred  and  two 
years  later  Russia  said  to  the  Czar,  "Czars 
are  no  longer  fashionable."  The  difference 
between  those  two  statements  is  the  measure 
of  the  influence  of  the  American  conception 
of  the  state  as  coextensive  with  citizenship, 
and  of  government  as  responsible  to  this 
citizenship,  and  of  a  constitution  as  the  pro 
tector  of  individual  rights. 


150  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

LECTURE  V 
COOPERATIVE  SOVEREIGNTY 

THE  fourth  ideal  which  has  found  expres 
sion  in  the  development  of  America  has  been 
that  of  a  cooperative  sovereignty. 

In  history  sovereignty  has  been  far  enough 
from  being  cooperative.  Every  nation  has 
regarded  itself  as  possessing  not  only  the 
absolute  power  of  administering  its  own  af 
fairs,  maintain  an  army  and  navy,  issue 
money  and  enforce  its  own  laws,  but  the 
right  to  extend  its  control  to  other  nations. 
Along  with  this  power  has  existed  a  national 
pride  peculiarly  susceptible  to  injury  and 
insult.  Sovereignty  in  a  nation  has  thus  re 
flected  the  sovereignty  of  the  absolute  king 
with  his  unrestrained  power  and  supreme 
dignity.  Beyond  it  there  lay  only  God.  The 
sovereign  on  earth  was  the  visible  expression 
of  the  Sovereign  in  heaven. 

The  stormy  rise  of  nationalities  in  the  six 
teenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  kept  this 
conception  of  sovereignty  always  in  the  fore 
ground.  Unrestrained  by  any  power  su- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         151 

perior  to  itself,  a  nation  was  not  a  moral 
entity.  It  could  do  what  it  was  able  to  do. 
War  was  almost  continuous,  for  out  from 
war  came  national  expansion.  Subjects  of 
one  sovereign  were  forced  to  become  subjects 
of  another.  To  question  the  right  of  a  state 
to  control  its  own  subjects  and  attack  its 
neighbors  was  to  limit  its  sovereignty.  To 
a  considerable  extent  this  conception  still 
holds  sway  in  the  thoughts  of  legislators. 
Conditions  which  touch  the  sovereign  honor 
of  a  nation  are  not  regarded  as  justiciable. 
They  lie  beyond  the  range  of  treaties  and  are 
regarded  as  legitimate  causes  of  war. 

But  between  the  conceptions  of  sover 
eignty  universal  in  the  seventeenth  century 
and  those  of  to-day  lies  a  very  real  difference. 
Without  any  definite  discussion  of  interna 
tional  morals,  and  certainly  without  any  at 
tempt  to  limit  the  right  of  any  sovereign 
power  to  enter  upon  war  on  its  own  volition, 
there  has  grown  up  a  belief  that  sovereignty 
must  regard  advantages  which  are  superior 
to  itself.  Nations  are  beginning  to  think  of 
humanity.  To  this  change  the  United 
States  has  made  important  contributions. 


152  THE  VALIDITY  OF 


The  ideal  of  America,  albeit  still  imper 
fect,  that  sovereignty  can  be  cooperative  as 
well  as  independent  has  sprung  not  from  ab 
stract  politics  but  from  national  behavior. 
Incomplete  though  it  may  be,  its  life  history 
is  by  no  means  brief.  The  establishment 
of  the  United  Colonies  of  'New  England 
( 1643)  upon  the  basis  of  a  formal  agreement 
of  Connecticut,  New  Haven,  Plymouth, 
Massachusetts  Bay  to  act  together  for  the 
sake  of  protection  against  the  Indians,  is 
a  sort  of  connecting  link  between  the  older 
conception  of  alliances  and  the  later  con 
ception  of  sovereign  states.  In  a  sense  it 
had  already  been  forecast  by  the  forming  of 
little  towns  into  independent  colonies.  A 
union  of  all  the  English  colonies  on  the  At 
lantic  seaboard  seems  never  to  have  occurred 
to  the  original  settlers.  The  first  attempt  to 
find  some  unity  of  action  sprang  from  the 
need  of  establishing  a  common  defense 
against  the  Six  Indian  Tribes.  In  1754  the 
so-called  Albany  Conference  was  summoned 
with  this  end  in  view.  At  this  conference 
Franklin  proposed  a  plan  of  union  of  the 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         153 

northern  colonies.  According  to  this,  each 
colony  would  give  up  its  particular  royal 
charter  and  join  the  others  in  something  like 
a  self -directive  state  under  the  suzerainty  of 
the  mother  country.  In  a  way  it  was  a  fore 
cast  of  the  present  British  Empire.  It  was 
to  have  a  president  appointed  by  the  Crown, 
a  Grand  Council  of  delegates  elected  by  the 
Colonial  Assembly.  Its  legislation  was  to 
be  subject  to  veto  by  the  President  and  ap 
proved  by  the  Crown.  The  plan  was  imme 
diately  rejected  by  Connecticut  because  of 
this  power  of  the  veto  and  then  by  all  the  col 
onies  and  the  Crown  itself.  This  interesting 
plan  proved  thus  impracticable  because  of 
unreadiness  to  modify  existing  institutions. 

In  1765  the  struggle  of  the  colonies  with 
the  home  government  over  the  Stamp  Tax 
led  to  the  summoning  in  New  York  of  an 
other  conference.  This  Stamp  Act  Con 
gress  was  composed  of  twenty-eight  dele 
gates  representing  all  the  thirteen  colonies 
except  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  and 
Georgia,  although  these  colonies  were  not 
opposed  to  the  plan.  As  it  turned  out,  this 
Congress  was  a  forerunner  of  the  later  co 
operative  actions  of  the  colonies.  The  care- 


154  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

ful  limitation  of  powers  granted  by  the  col 
onies  to  their  representatives  is  worthy  of 
careful  consideration  by  students  of  the 
American  Constitution.  They  show  very 
clearly  the  unwillingness  of  the  colonies  to 
delegate  any  of  their  limited  powers  to  a 
representative  body.  As  was  expected,  the 
Congress  drew  up  petitions  and  memorials 
to  Parliament,  protesting  against  the  Stamp 
Act.  What  was,  however,  of  more  impor 
tance,  it  adopted  a  Declaration  of  Rights 
and  Liberties  which  set  forth  sharply  the 
colonies'  view  of  their  relations  with  the  home 
government.  But  this  Congress  accom 
plished  little  beyond  giving  expression  to  the 
growing  sense  of  union  among  the  colonies. 
The  Stamp  Act  was  repealed  within  a  few 
months  because  it  brought  in  no  revenue, 
but  this  action  of  Parliament  was  accompa 
nied  by  the  statement  that  "Parliament  has 
power  to  bind  the  colonies  in  all  cases  what 
soever."  This  in  turn  served  to  hasten  the 
coming  of  American  independence.  The 
next  ten  years  were  to  show  that  the  colonies 
were  unwilling  to  admit  any  such  limitation 
of  their  powers.  While  they  did  not  in  1765 
regard  themselves  as  sovereign  states,  they 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          155 

did  regard  themselves  as  having  power  of 
self-determination  in  regard  to  their  own  af 
fairs.  In  fact,  so  independent  did  they  ap 
parently  become  that  in  1769  Parliament 
undertook  an  investigation  of  what  it  re 
garded  as  acts  of  treason  committed  in  the 
colonies  and  sent  troops  to  enforce  its  de 
cisions.  In  1773,  the  Virginia  Assembly  ap 
pointed  a  Committee  of  Correspondence  for 
communicating  with  the  other  colonies — an 
act  which  was  followed  by  the  other  colonies. 
Within  the  same  year  Franklin  again  pro 
posed  a  Congress  for  the  colonies,  and  this 
time  his  plan  was  adopted  by  all  the  colonies 
except  Georgia.  On  September  5,  1774,  the 
first  Continental  Congress  met  at  Philadel 
phia  and  during  the  few  weeks  it  was  in  ses 
sion  prepared  an  address  to  the  King,  me 
morials  to  Great  Britain  and  nonparticipat- 
ing  colonies  in  America,  drew  up  a  Declara 
tion  of  Rights  and  on  October  20  established 
an  American  Association.  This  was  in  ef 
fect  an  agreement  to  stop  trade  with  Great 
Britain  until  the  unsatisfactory  acts  had 
been  repealed.  When  it  adjourned  it  re 
solved  to  meet  the  next  year  in  case  it  had 
not  gained  its  desired  ends.  Because  of  the 


156  THE  VALIDITY  OF 

attempt  of  the  British  to  enforce  the  Acts, 
Massachusetts  broke  into  rebellion  and  war 
followed. 

The  American  Revolution  clearly  indi 
cates  how  little  sense  of  cooperation  the  col 
onies  had  in  their  first  experience  of  sover 
eignty.  The  Continental  Congress,  indeed, 
continued  throughout  the  entire  period  of 
the  war,  but  it  was  possessed  of  practically 
no  power  to  enforce  its  decisions.  Each  col 
ony — or  State — was  sensitive  to  any  outer 
control.  After  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  July  4,  1776,  on  November  15, 
1777,  the  Congress  adopted  Articles  of  Con 
federation  and  proposals  of  union  between 
the  thirteen  States  which  then  regarded 
themselves  as  independent  and  possessed  of 
sovereign  power.  This  union  was  called  the 
United  States  of  America,  but  its  central 
idea  was  that  of  a  confederation.  There  was 
no  citizenship  outside  that  of  the  various 
States.  Treaties  which  were  made  with 
France  were  those  of  the  united  states,  but 
the  Continental  Congress  had  no  power  to 
enforce  their  provisions  upon  the  various 
States.  Indeed,  it  was  exceedingly  diffi 
cult  to  induce  these  States  to  engage  in 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          157 

any  continued  united  effort  for  the  war.  The 
armies  under  Washington  and  the  other  gen 
erals  repeatedly  disintegrated.  It  grew  im 
possible  to  raise  money  to  pay  the  soldiers 
through  requisition  upon  the  States,  since 
each  State  determined  just  how  much  finan 
cial  assistance  it  would  give  the  United 
States.  The  treaty  of  peace  between  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain,  France, 
and  Spain  was  a  treaty  with  a  Confederation 
that  had  no  power  to  compel  the  action  of  the 
citizens  of  its  component  States.  It  could 
not  establish  a  revenue  by  imposts.  Its  cur 
rency  became  worthless,  and  the  treaties 
were  soon  violated  by  various  States. 

Four  years  after  the  close  of  the  Revolu 
tionary  War  the  United  States  were  on  the 
verge  of  anarchy.  There  seemed  to  be  no 
way  of  producing  order.  Sovereignty  in  the 
thirteen  States  was  of  the  nature  of  the  sov 
ereignty  of  European  states.  Each  was 
jealous  of  its  fellows.  The  threatened  col 
lapse  of  order  and  the  paralysis  of  govern 
ment  led  to  the  formation  of  a  new  Constitu 
tion,  which  should  inaugurate  a  genuine 
union  in  place  of  a  confederation. 

Even  a  superficial   study   of  American 


158          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

popular  opinion  in  1789  will  show  how  far 
the  country  was  from  any  national  unanim 
ity  of  spirit.  Each  State  claimed  to  have 
full  sovereignty,  and  already  quarrels  were 
breaking  out  between  them  which  threat 
ened  civil  war.  A  monarchy  was  out  of 
the  question,  and  a  confederation  had  been 
found  impracticable.  Thrust,  therefore,  into 
a  condition  which  seemed  even  to  the  bravest 
patriot  all  but  certain  to  result  in  anarchy, 
the  little  group  of  men  who  drew  up  the  new 
Constitution  undertook  to  build  a  federal 
government  that  should  not  deny  sover 
eignty  to  the  States,  yet  should  have  a  sov 
ereignty  of  its  own.  This  was  accomplished 
by  the  novel  device  of  delegating  certain 
powers  of  each  of  the  thirteen  sovereign 
States  to  the  new  federal  government,  by 
making  the  citizens  of  the  States  citizens  of 
the  United  States  and  by  having  the  Consti 
tution  adopted  by  the  people  rather  than  by 
the  legislators  of  the  several  States.  It  was 
thus  a  form  of  compact  between  citizens 
rather  than  between  governments. 

Yet  the  original  States  persisted.  Never 
by  choice  or  the  growth  of  precedent  have 
they  become  mere  departments  of  a  unitary 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         159 

state.  Such  a  national  structure  as  this  in 
volves  puzzles  citizens  of  highly  centralized 
and  departmentalized  states  like  Japan  and 
France.  Yet  in  this  local  citizenship  with 
its  varied  legislation  lies  no  small  element 
of  our  national  strength.  It  conserves  and 
expresses  an  intimate  patriotism  at  once 
jealous  of  local  rights  and  cooperative  in  na 
tional  affairs. 

For  our  Constitution  fundamentally  does 
not  aim  at  overhead  absolutism.  The  ideal 
it  embodies  is  not  that  of  political  uniform 
ity.  By  its  very  origin  it  aims  at  union, 
order,  and  cooperative  efficiency.  Its  mak 
ers  had  no  theoretical  interest  in  the  prob 
lems  of  government  as  such.  They  took  the 
situation  as  they  found  it  and  made  such 
changes  and  demanded  such  concessions  as 
seemed  imperative  for  the  building  up  of  a 
central  government  which  should  be  capable 
of  national  defense,  carrying  on  of  foreign 
affairs,  financing  itself  under  certain  definite 
limitations,  maintaining  public  order,  and  is 
suing  money.  These  were  the  powers  of  a 
sovereign  state,  but  they  were  delegated  by 
the  thirteen  sovereign  States  to  the  Federal 
Government. 


160          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

So  adventurous  an  undertaking  carried  in 
itself  many  unsettled  questions  as  to  the  ex 
tent  of  the  sovereignty  which  had  been  left 
the  original  thirteen  States.  Old  ideas  per 
sisted.  In  1798  Virginia  and  Kentucky 
adopted  resolutions  to  the  effect  that  each 
State  had  the  right  to  judge  for  itself  just 
how  far  the  acts  of  the  federal  government 
were  binding.  Fortunately,  the  occasion 
which  gave  rise  to  such  a  dangerous  doctrine 
passed  and  the  wisdom  of  the  early  admin 
istrations  and  a  number  of  exceedingly  im 
portant  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court  soon 
made  it  apparent  that  the  constitutional  acts 
of  the  federal  government  were  to  be  ac 
cepted  by  the  States  and  that  no  State  was 
to  pass  legislation  contrary  to  the  congres 
sional  acts. 

But  the  question  as  to  the  extent  of  the 
sovereignty  left  in  the  possession  of  the 
States  constituting  the  Union  still  remained. 
Nor  did  it  compel  a  decision  until  the  emer 
gence  of  slavery  as  a  sectional  issue.  Even 
then  the  right  of  a  State  to  reassume  its  in 
dependence  either  by  nullification  of  the  acts 
of  Congress  or  by  actual  secession  from  the 
Union  did  not  become  a  burning  issue  until 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         161 

the  expansion  of  the  North  made  it  plain 
that  its  political  power  in  Congress  would 
soon  be  greater  than  that  of  the  South.  The 
two  sections  of  the  country,  which  had  been 
practically  equal  in  population  at  the  time 
of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  were  be 
coming  a  majority  and  a  minority.  As  long 
as  the  balance  of  power  in  the  Senate  was 
maintained  by  the  admission  of  an  equal 
number  of  slave  and  free  States,  the  ques 
tion  of  sovereignty  was  left  in  abeyance. 
When,  however,  the  South  became  a  mi 
nority  and  feared  anti-slavery  legislation,  it 
magnified  the  sovereignty  of  each  State. 
Such  a  political  program  had  two  serious  de 
fects.  It  refused  to  admit  the  Union  as  in 
separable,  and  at  the  same  time  demanded 
that  the  Union  protect  the  institutions  of  one 
State  in  all  other  States.  This  latter  demand 
was  necessary,  since  slavery  was  evidently 
doomed  unless  the  entire  nation  supported  it 
as  among  the  rights  enjoyed  by  certain  of 
its  component  States.  Paradoxically,  States' 
rights,  in  order  to  maintain  slavery,  needed 
the  support  of  the  Union.  It  denied  and  yet 
demanded  the  cooperative  sovereignty. 
Thus  the  economic  and  social  theory 


162          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

which  centered  about  slavery  inevitably  be 
came  constitutional  propaganda.  We  are 
not  altogether  strangers  to  the  issue,  for  we 
face  a  similar  difficulty  in  enforcing  the 
eighteenth  amendment,  but  such  a  difficulty 
to-day  does  not  involve  geographical  di 
visions.  The  bitterness  of  constitutional 
struggles  is  not  to-day  solidified  into  eco 
nomic  areas.  But  in  the  early  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  country  faced  a  real 
issue  as  to  the  interpretation  of  our  national 
life.  For  thirty  years  after  the  Missouri 
Compromise  the  maintenance  of  the  Union 
was  the  supreme  purpose  of  all  statesmen. 
When  the  Southern  social  theory  was  com 
pleted,  States'  rights  was  its  one  protection, 
the  Union  its  great  adversary.  That  the  is 
sue  should  have  been  settled  by  civil  war  was 
probably  inevitable,  for  the  two  conceptions 
of  a  social  order  became  politically  incom 
patible  and  antagonistic.  The  era  of  com 
promise  gave  time  for  the  marshaling  of  so 
cial  forces  and  material  resources.  History 
again  gave  the  verdict.  The  Civil  War  not 
only  determined  that  the  wage  system  in 
stead  of  slavery  should  be  a  phase  of  capital 
ism,  but  it  also  determined  that  the  United 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         163 

States  should  be  a  nation  with  a  national 
sovereignty  instead  of  a  confederacy  with  a 
group  of  local  sovereignties;  a  nation  with 
a  national  citizenship  instead  of  a  confed 
eracy  with  local  citizenship.  The  fall  of 
slave-capitalism  and  States'  rights  meant  the 
rise  of  a  federal  democracy.  Sovereignty 
had  at  last  been  made  cooperative. 

With  the  passage  of  the  fourteenth 
amendment  still  further  limitations  were 
put  upon  the  independent  action  of  the 
various  sovereign  States.  By  it  the  federal 
government  was  given  the  power  of  prevent 
ing  the  States  from  passing  certain  laws  af 
fecting  their  citizens.  The  efficiency  of  this 
new  control  has  been  to  a  considerable  ex 
tent  negated  by  evasive  legislation,  but  as  a 
principle  it  is  a  part  of  the  national  struc 
ture.  Restriction  has  now  supplemented  co 
operation. 

Yet  the  fundamental  conception  of  the 
Union  has  not  thereby  been  changed.  Our 
federal  government  is  still  one  of  delegated 
powers  formulated  in  the  Constitution.  Ex 
tension  of  these  powers  is  not  the  destruction 
of  the  principle.  The  ideal  of  cooperative 
sovereignty  is  preserved. 


164,          THE  VALIDITY  OF, 

II 

The  extent  of  the  influence  of  this  ideal 
of  cooperative  sovereignty  has  not  been  suf 
ficiently  appreciated.  Like  other  aspects 
of  the  constitutional  history  of  the  United 
States,  it  has  encouraged  a  new  attitude  of 
mind.  It  has  served  as  a  tension  point  for 
readjustments  in  international  relations.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  the  colonists  ex 
tended  the  experience  of  their  mother  coun 
try  into  the  new  political  conditions  de 
manded  by  the  building  of  a  people  in  an  all 
but  empty  continent.  Similarly,  the  ex 
perience  of  Americans  in  erecting  a  dele 
gated  sovereignty  for  the  common  good  of 
sovereign  States  accustomed  Americans  to 
a  recognition  of  the  rights  of  other  nations. 

Particularly  is  this  true  of  the  relations  of 
the  United  States  and  Great  Britain,  a 
country  which  was  contemporaneously  mak 
ing  the  same  expansion  of  English  consti 
tutional  experience.  It  is  not  so  many  years 
ago  that  we  were  about  to  celebrate  the  hun 
dred  years  of  peace  between  the  two  world 
powers.  When,  however,  the  time  came, 
Europe  was  at  war  and  we  were  neutral. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         165 

Lest,  therefore,  we  should  in  some  way  vio 
late  this  neutrality,  we  curtailed  the  cele 
bration  of  a  world  epoch  to  a  few  pageants 
and  the  reading  of  historical  essays.  It 
seems  a  pity  that  no  larger  attention  was 
paid  to  this  extraordinary  fact.  It  might 
have  served  a  very  useful  purpose  in  off 
setting  the  anti-English  propaganda  of  con 
tinental  Europeans  and  Irishmen.  Even 
now  it  is  worth  consideration.  For  this  cen 
tury  of  peace  was  not  a  century  of  peace- 
ableness.  The  United  States  and  Great 
Britain  have  quarreled  over  almost  every 
subject  about  which  other  nations  have 
fought.  There  is  not  a  foot  of  our  northern 
boundary  line,  not  a  codfish  on  the  banks  of 
Newfoundland,  but  has  been  submitted  to 
arbitration.  Yet  we  have  not  fought.  Each 
nation  through  its  experience  in  a  develop 
ing  democracy  has  come  to  see  that  the 
rights  of  humanity  are  not  antagonistic  to 
the  rights  of  sovereignty.  Perhaps  not  al 
ways  graciously  but  always  effectively,  the 
two  countries  have  yielded  to  a  consideration 
of  the  rights  of  each  other. 

Take,  for  example,  our  much  discussed 
Monroe  Doctrine.  When  President  Monroe 


166          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

wrote  his  history-making  message  (1823), 
the  reactionary  forces  of  the  continent  of 
Europe  had  bound  themselves,  under  pious 
verbiage,  to  prevent  the  extension  of  de 
mocracy.  They  were  planning  not  only  the 
fixing  of  the  peace  of  Europe  but  also  the 
permanency  of  absolute  monarchy.  Accord 
ing  to  the  doctrine  set  forth  in  the  Presi 
dent's  message:  "The  American  continents 
are  not  to  be  considered  as  subjects  for  fu 
ture  colonization  by  any  European  power 
and  the  extension  of  the  program  of  the 
Holy  Alliance  to  these  continents  would  be 
viewed  as  the  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly 
disposition  toward  the  United  States."  The 
more  one  considers  this  statement,  the  more 
audacious  does  it  sound.  In  1823  we  had 
practically  no  army  and  a  weak  navy.  Such 
a  recognition  of  self-defense  as  involving  the 
protection  of  other  nations  would  have  been 
hardly  more  than  political  bombast  if  it  had 
not  been  for  the  fact  that  Great  Britain  took 
the  declaration  seriously  and  made  it  a  basis 
for  international  friendship.  The  British 
fleet  has  been  the  great  bulwark  of  the  Mon 
roe  Doctrine.  Self-interest  undoubtedly 
was  operative  in  both  the  American  and  the 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          167 

British  policies,  but  it  is  one  thing  to  main 
tain  sovereignty  and  another  thing  at  the 
same  time  to  see  that  national  safety  is  a 
good  only  as  other  nations  are  respected  in 
their  sovereignty.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  developing  an  international  morality,  that 
is  the  most  significant  thing  in  our  Monroe 
Doctrine.  We  have  never  attempted  to 
coerce  the  states  to  the  south  of  us  into 
union,  but  we  have  made  it  plain  to  the 
world  that  the  Americas  are  to  be  treated 
not  as  isolated  sovereignties  but  as  a  con 
tinent. 

This  spirit  of  subordinating  national  sen 
sitiveness  to  international  well-being  ex 
tended  over  the  world.  In  1915  the  princi 
ple  of  arbitration  was  expressed  in  two  hun 
dred  and  fifty-five  arbitration  treaties  in  ad 
dition  to  those  "bide-a-wee"  treaties  of  Mr. 
Bryan.  Of  these  arbitration  treaties  the  cen 
tral  powers  had  made  but  seven  and  of  these 
Germany  had  made  but  one.  The  others 
are  between  states  who  have  had  real  or  sup 
posed  experience  in  democracy.  The  United 
States  has  not  gone  as  far  in  relying  upon  ar 
bitration  as  some  of  us  would  like,  but  our 
sympathies  and  influence  have  grown  con- 


168          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

stantly  more  pronounced  in  this  regard.  By 
our  experience  in  cooperative  sovereignty  at 
home  we  have  come  to  feel  that  war  is  a 
useless  tragedy  to  be  avoided.  Such  an  at 
titude  of  mind  is  bound  to  express  itself 
still  further  in  some  form  or  other  of  inter 
national  cooperation.  A  sovereignty  which 
insists  exclusively  upon  its  own  rights  is  a 
breeder  of  war.  Ten  years  ago  this  might 
have  seemed  hardly  more  than  an  abstract 
generalization.  To-day  it  is  a  truth  of  su 
preme  value.  We  are  now  engaged  in  a  uni 
versal  discussion  as  to  how  far  the  sovereign 
rights  of  a  nation  are  compatible  with  co 
operation  with  other  nations. 

There  are  those  that  tell  us  that  national 
ism  is  something  to  be  destroyed,  that  the 
proper  unity  of  the  race  is  to  be  found  in  the 
proletariat.  There  are  others,  especially  old 
men,  who  insist  that  a  nation  must  be  self- 
sufficient  and  detached  from  the  world  to 
live.  Of  the  two  conceptions,  the  proletarian 
internationalism  is  a  reform  against  history 
and  human  nature.  National  boundaries 
were  never  more  subjects  of  passionate  in 
terest  than  to-day.  As  to  a  self -centered 
atomistic  nationalism  it  is  enough  to  say  that 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          169 

no  nation  nowadays  can  be  detached  from 
the  world  at  large.  However  much  one  may 
regret  that  fact,  it  must  be  regarded  as  a 
datum  of  thought.  No  amount  of  voting  on 
the  part  of  our  legislative  bodies  can  restore 
the  asylum  once  given  by  the  Atlantic  and 
the  Pacific.  You  cannot  put  out  a  conflagra 
tion  by  posting  a  sign  to  the  effect  that  you 
decline  to  share  in  the  flames  that  come 
sweeping  down  the  street.  You  cannot 
make  yourself  immune  from  smallpox  by 
running  a  quarantine  rope  across  your  side 
walk.  We  are  a  sovereign  nation  in  the 
midst  of  sovereign  nations,  knit  to  them  by 
commerce,  subject  to  the  social  contagion  of 
their  ills.  Any  exercise  of  sovereignty  that 
ignores  these  facts  will  be  as  futile  as  that 
which  Napoleon  attempted  to  exercise  over 
the  peoples  of  Central  Europe.  We  tried 
assiduously  to  keep  out  of  the  Great  War, 
but  the  world  drew  us  into  the  maelstrom  of 
its  tragedy.  The  task  of  adjusting  na 
tional  sovereignty  to  a  world  solidarity  is 
not  a  matter  for  phrase  makers,  impatient 
idealists,  or  selfish  profiteers.  It  is  for  men 
who,  like  the  fathers  of  our  Constitution, 
dare  face  the  already  existing  need  of  some 


170          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

sort  of  solidarity.  The  nineteenth  century 
taught  us  that  in  our  land  the  sovereignty  of 
States  must  be  made  cooperative.  The  twen 
tieth  century  will  teach  us  the  impossibility 
of  any  secession  from  world  affairs  or  nulli 
fication  of  world  duties.  The  force  of  cir 
cumstance  is  already  compelling  us.  As  the 
new  continent  forced  us  to  expand  our  local 
ideals  into  national  affairs,  so  a  new  world 
is  forcing  us  to  find  some  sort  of  adjustment 
by  which  nations  can  live  together  with 
peace.  We  want  no  superstate,  but  we  do 
want  and  shall  have  codified  cooperation 
among  states  that  are  sovereign. 

Partly  because  of  our  experience  in  the 
recognition  of  each  other's  rights,  partly  be 
cause  we  have  not  been  forced  into  fierce 
competition  for  territory,  we  have  developed 
a  creditable  attitude  toward  weaker  nations. 
Take,  for  example,  the  matter  of  indemnities. 
They  have  come  to  us  from  the  necessity  of 
cooperation  with  European  nations  in  wars 
with  weak  nations.  In  1868  we  had  a  war 
with  Japan.  It  was  just  when  that  country 
was  beginning  its  new  epoch,  and  the  Japa 
nese  government,  partly  from  weakness  and 
partly  from  ignorance,  had  given  offense  to 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         171 

certain  European  nations.  The  United 
States  was  obliged  to  cooperate  in  a  war. 
We  had  no  army  in  Japan,  and  no  navy,  but 
we  hired  a  gunboat  from  the  Dutch  and  went 
to  war.  When  victory  came  after  a  few 
weeks,  there  also  came  the  inevitable  demand 
for  indemnity.  Our  share  of  the  loot  was 
$800,000.  It  was  paid  over  and  put  into 
the  treasury  of  the  United  States,  but  it  was 
never  appropriated,  and  in  1883  the  United 
States  paid  back  the  entire  amount  with  in 
terest. 

In  1898  there  was  the  Boxer  trouble  in 
China.  It  was  the  attempt  of  a  people  in 
terror  of  subjection  to  alien  powers  to  push 
the  foreign  influence  out  of  China.  China 
was  in  actual  process  of  dismemberment  at 
the  hands  of  Russia,  Great  Britain,  Ger 
many,  France,  and  Japan.  The  ambassa 
dors  of  the  various  nations  were  besieged  in 
Peking.  An  expeditionary  force,  composed 
of  troops  of  the  various  nations,  rescued  the 
ambassadors  and  proceeded  to  inflict  pun 
ishment  on  the  Chinese.  When  the  uprising 
was  over,  an  indemnity  of  450,000,000  taels 
was  laid  on  the  country.  Our  share  was 
something  like  $20,000,000.  But  again  the 


172          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

United  States  refused  the  indemnity,  and 
after  having  received  a  sum  sufficient  to 
make  actual  reparation  for  loss  of  property 
and  lives,  and  the  expense  of  the  expedition, 
we  told  China  to  keep  the  balance,  approxi 
mately  $10,000,000.  The  income  from  that 
sum  is  now  being  used  to  send  Chinese  youths 
to  the  United  States  for  an  education.  And 
what  is  even  more  significant,  we  insisted 
that  all  nations  should  respect  the  integrity 
of  China  and  maintain  the  open  door  to  com 
merce  of  all  nations.  The  world  stands 
pledged  to  that  policy  to-day. 

When  we  have  been  obliged  to  fight  with 
other  nations,  we  have  paid  rather  than  re 
ceived  indemnities.  I  have  no  desire  to  jus 
tify  the  war  with  Mexico,  although  it  has  its 
valiant  defenders,  but  I  wish  to  remind  you 
that  if  we  did  conquer  Mexico,  we  paid  her 
$15,000,000  for  the  practically  uninhabited 
land  which  we  annexed.  Similarly  in  the 
case  of  the  Philippines  we  paid  Spain  an  in 
demnity  of  $20,000,000  and  then  undertook 
to  educate  the  Filipinos  into  a  capacity  for 
self-government.  And  we  have  kept  our 
promises  to  the  extent  the  welfare  of  the 
Philippine  Islands  seems  to  warrant. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          173 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  there  has  not 
been  arbitrary  action  in  our  dealings  with 
the  Central  American  states  and  Haiti,  but 
we  have  never  looted  these  states  nor  an 
nexed  them.  We  have,  rather,  sought  to  as 
sist  them  to  stability  of  government  and  to 
protect  them  from  the  rapacity  of  European 
creditors. 

And  then  there  is  Mexico.  Our  refusal  to 
intervene  in  Mexico,  now  so  thoroughly  jus 
tified  by  the  course  of  events,  was  a  con 
tinuation  of  our  policy  not  to  let  our  govern 
ment  be  made  a  cat's-paw  by  commercial  in 
terests.  The  American  soldier  has  never 
followed  the  concessionaire.  President 
Wilson  did  something  more  than  keep 
America  out  of  war  with  Mexico.  He 
showed  the  South  American  continent  that 
the  United  States  in  applying  its  democracy 
to  international  affairs  was  not  a  big  bully 
seeking  to  aggrandize  itself  at  the  expense 
of  other  nations.  We  have  recognized  sov 
ereignty  while  protecting  states.  In  so  do 
ing  we  have  evolved  a  new  conception  of  in 
ternational  relations.  We  have  made  them 
a  source  of  helpfulness  and  cooperation 
rather  than  exploitation. 


174          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

Who  can  fail  to  be  proud  of  a  country  that 
thus  treats  weaker  nations!  We  have  had 
our  moments  of  shame  and  repentance,  of 
ignominy  and  civil  war,  but  our  interna 
tional  behavior  increasingly  is  developing  the 
ideal  that  strong  nations  must  recognize  the 
rights  of  weak  nations.  As  President  Wil 
son  said,  "A  weak  nation  should  enjoy  self- 
government."  That  is  not  only  an  interna 
tional  evangel,  but  is  another  way  of  say 
ing  that  sovereignty  must  be  cooperative. 

The  war  we  have  just  fought  was  one  of 
self-defense,  not  merely  for  ourselves  but 
for  democracy  as  well.  We  fought  to  es 
tablish  a  world  in  which  peace  should  not  be 
at  the  mercy  of  any  autocracy,  but  one  in 
which  through  the  mutual  recognition  of 
each  other's  rights,  nations  should  make  it 
possible  for  men  and  women  to  live  joyously 
so  controlled  by  justice  that  social  improve 
ment  shall  go  on  to  full  fruition.  In  such  a 
world  small  nations  shall  be  no  longer  the 
prey  of  strong  nations,  and  men  and  nations 
alike  shall  see  that  it  is  more  blessed  to  give 
justice  than  fight  for  rights.  That  this  great 
ideal  is  not  yet  realized  is  no  ground  for  de 
spair.  Already  it  is  asserting  itself  in  vari- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         175 

ous  forms.1  The  British  Empire  is  a  group 
of  cooperative  sovereignties.  The  League 
of  Nations  is  already  in  action.  The  Balkan 
States  are  forming  alliances  that  promise 
some  approach  to  common  policies.  Consti 
tutionalism  a  century  and  a  half  ago  was  re 
garded  no  less  chimerical  than  this  peaceful 
fellowship  of  nations  looking  to  mutual  ad 
vantage  and  a  common  future.  In  the  world 
as  in  America,  sovereignty  is  yet  to  be  co 
operative  rather  than  belligerent. 

1  Since  the  delivery  of  these  lectures  there  was  held  the 
Conference  on  Limitation  of  Armaments.  It  is  another  illus 
tration  of  the  new  power  of  the  ideal  of  cooperation  among 
sovereign  states. 


176          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

LECTURE  VI 
AMERICANISM  AS  AN  IDEAL 

WE  have  thus  far  been  considering  ideals 
which  are  particularly  associated  with  our 
national  development.  But  these  are  by  no 
means  all  that  America  represents.  Amer 
ica  itself  is  an  ideal.  To  attempt  to  define 
it,  to  analyze  its  elements  is  almost  to  destroy 
its  power.  In  many  an  immigrant  mind  the 
United  States  is  a  synonym  for  the  Golden 
Grail — a  deliverance  from  all  subjection,  a 
pledge  of  peace  and  plenty.  It  requires  no 
cynic  to  point  out  that  the  America  of  actual 
fact  is  something  very  different  from  this 
dream,  and  yet  we  should  be  immeasurably 
poorer  if  we  were  content  to  say  the  America 
of  to-day  is  the  true  America  of  our  hopes. 
We  admit  our  crudities,  our  materialism,  our 
bombastic  patriotism  and  all  those  other  evil 
qualities  which  the  foreign  observer  so  read 
ily  discovers.  But  we  deny  that  the  true 
America  can  be  known  fully  from  the  exist 
ing  America.  We  look  back  across  three  cen 
turies  and  see  an  uninhabited  continent  re- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          177 

ceiving  a  few  thousand  adventurous  souls 
who  sought  to  tame  it  into  a  home  land. 
Across  these  centuries  of  development  we 
chart  our  national  development.  If  growth 
had  stopped,  if  our  present  civilization  were 
fastened  on  us,  if  the  leaven  of  hope  and 
creative  zeal  were  not  yet  within  our  hearts, 
we  might  well  feel  America  deserves  the 
criticism  to  which  she  has  of  late  been  so 
pitilessly  exposed.  But  still  feeling  the 
creative  urge,  still  believing  that  America 
is  in  the  making,  we  demand  of  our  critics 
that  they  add  this  sense  of  the  future  to  the 
present  they  find  so  unsatisfactory.  For 
there  still  lies  in  our  minds  the  promise  of  a 
better  social  order.  The  past  with  its  rapid 
development  is  a  promise  of  a  future  that 
shall  also  see  development.  America  is  still 
becoming. 

But  what  is  it  to  become  ?  Is  to-morrow  to 
carry  forward  the  curve  of  yesterday?  Can 
these  ideals  which  have  proved  their  validity 
in  our  larger  individual  freedom,  our  de 
mocracy,  our  Constitution,  and  our  sense  of 
international  morality,  still  be  trusted  to  be 
operative  in  the  world  which  they  have  them 
selves  begotten?  Or  will  they  become  merely 


178          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

like  the  glowing  pictures  of  their  youth  and 
maturity  drawn  by  the  aged? 

The  temptation  is  to  answer  such  ques 
tions  affirmatively  or  negatively  in  accord 
ance  with  one's  own  prejudices  and  hopes. 
To  the  new  intellectuals  intent  upon  the  im 
perfections  of  our  social  order  and  the  un 
willingness  of  men  to  adopt  radical  reform, 
the  only  answer  seems  one  of  despair.  The 
America  which  they  see  is  sordid,  filled  with 
grafters,  profiteers,  petty  politicians,  enor 
mous  aggregations  of  wealth  which  hold  the 
masses  in  subjection,  a  land  without  creative 
imagination,  poets,  arts,  literature,  music — 
a  land  in  which  our  Puritan  inheritance  pre 
vents  the  development  of  beauty  and  con 
ventions  restrict  artistic  self-expression.  On 
the  other  hand,  to  those  who  have  succeeded 
and  who  have  shared  in  the  better  life  of  the 
country,  the  future  seems  to  herald  only  a 
steady  increase  of  comfortable  homes,  op 
portunities  for  wealth,  the  "triumphant  de 
mocracy"  which  Mr.  Carnegie  preached. 

A  sober  appraisal  of  the  situation,  how 
ever,  will  lead  to  no  unqualified  reply.  As 
we  look  into  our  national  life  we  need  to  ask 
whether  these  ideals  which  have  been  con- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          179 

struct! ve  in  the  past  are  still  elements  in  our 
social  mind,  and  if  so,  whether  readjust 
ments  of  life  are  now  proceeding,  which 
make  them  still  as  potent  as  in  the  past.  In 
other  words,  despite  the  difficulty  of  any  con 
temporary  estimate,  we  ask  ourselves  just 
what  are  the  creative  forces  of  our  own 
America?  The  answer  will  be  found  not  in 
programs,  but  in  Americans. 


Mr.  Edward  Bok,  in  his  interesting  and 
illuminating  autobiography,  describes  his 
fifty  years  of  life  in  America  as  a  process  of 
Americanization.  He  very  truly  says,  and 
in  this  he  is  supported  by  Lord  Bryce,  that 
the  approach  to  a  proper  understanding  of 
America  is  not  through  its  capacity  to  make 
money,  but  through  its  idealism.  Yet  after 
an  experience  of  the  actual  process  of  be 
ing  transformed  from  an  immigrant  to  one 
of  the  most  significant  characters  of  our  day, 
Mr.  Bok  goes  on  to  say  that  the  process 
showed  him  that  Americans  were  indiffer 
ent  to  thrift,  failed  to  honor  thoroughness  in 
the  performance  of  any  task,  neglected  the 
education  of  children  of  foreigners  even 


180          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

though  furnishing  them  with  public  schools, 
have  too  little  respect  for  law  and  authority, 
and  utterly  fail  to  instruct  the  new  voter  in 
the  significance  of  what  Americanism  really 
is.  That  is  a  serious  indictment,  all  the  more 
serious  because  drawn  from  wide  observa 
tion.  And  it  raises  the  fundamental  ques 
tion  as  to  what  Americanism  really  is.  Have 
we  as  a  people  any  distinguishing  character 
istics?  What  is  it  to  be  an  American? 

It  certainly  is  not  simply  to  be  an  inhab 
itant  of  America.  Unfortunately,  there  are 
too  many  persons,  by  no  means  to  be  limited 
to  immigrants,  who  live  in  America,  who  are 
even  citizens  of  the  commonwealth,  who  are 
indifferent  to  the  hopes,  the  lives,  the  creative 
ideals  which  have  made  it  a  nation. 

It  is  not  to  be  an  Anglo-Saxon.  Rooted 
as  our  institutions  are  in  English  history, 
America  is  not  a  second  edition  of  England. 
We  are  an  English-speaking  country,  but 
we  are  not  an  English  people.  We  are 
Americans.  This  seems  sometimes  very  con 
fusing  to  the  people  of  the  mother  land.  On 
the  one  hand,  they  want  to  think  of  us  as 
Anglo-Saxons.  On  the  other  hand,  as  a 
recent  English  writer  has  said,  one  must  dis- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          181 

possess  one's  "mind  of  the  idea  that  there  is 
an  American  people  at  all,  as  we  understand 
a  people  in  Europe.  To  be  a  people  is  the 
dominant  ideal  of  Americans,  an  ideal  which 
they  claim  with  all  appropriate  fierceness  to 
have  realized,  knowing  all  the  while  that  they 
have  done  nothing  of  this  sort,  and  that  their 
only  hope  of  doing  anything  of  the  kind  is 
to  do  away  with  their  present  social  system 
and  then  wait  five  centuries  for  events  to  de 
velop."  But  this  is  to  use  the  term  "people" 
in  an  ethnic  sense. 

That  we  have  our  own  personality  is  the 
view  of  Miinsterberg  and  McDougall. 
These  trained  observers  from  abroad  assert 
that  an  American  people  exists  and  that  al 
most  universally  Americans  possess  the 
same  characteristics.  Their  list  of  such  uni 
fying  characteristics  is  worth  considering: 
"a  spirit  of  self -direction  and  self-confidence, 
of  independence  and  initiative  of  a  degree 
unknown  elsewhere,  a  marvelous  optimism 
or  hopefulness  in  private  and  public  affairs, 
a  great  seriousness  tinged  with  religion,  a 
humorousness,  an  interest  in  the  welfare  of 
society,  a  high  degree  of  self-respect,  and  a 
pride  and  confidence  in  the  present  and  still 


182          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

more  in  the  future  of  the  nation;  an  intense 
activity  and  a  great  desire  for  self -improve 
ment,  a  truly  democratic  spirit  which  re 
gards  all  men  (or  rather,  all  white  men)  as 
essentially  or  potentially  equal,  and  a  com 
plete  intolerance  of  caste." 

A  careful  consideration  of  this  description, 
as  well  as  our  own  observation,  will  show 
that  in  our  character  there  are  elements 
which  are  not  necessarily  ideal.  Indeed, 
some  of  them  are  liable  to  become  anti-ideal. 
They  are  not  necessarily  vulgar  or  immoral, 
but  they  are  qualities  of  personality  which 
make  the  operation  of  the  highest  motives  of 
the  past  difficult. 

Initiative,  for  instance,  is  not  necessarily 
an  ideal.  Certainly  Americans  possess  it. 
The  capacity  to  think  quickly  and  act  almost 
before  one  thinks,  is  universally  recognized 
as  an  American  trait.  If  there  is  one  word 
our  American  vocabulary  despises  it  is 
manana.  "Do  it  Now"  is  the  motto  hanging 
above  the  desks  of  thousands  of  business 
men.  To  this  capacity  for  prompt  activity, 
which  waits  not  for  commands  but  for  op 
portunity,  no  small  share  of  American  ac 
complishment  is  due.  But  initiative  is  not 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          183 

idealism.  It  may  become  hardly  more  than 
the  restlessness  of  a  people  who  even  when 
tired  sit  in  rocking  chairs.  Even  at  its  best 
it  may  be  rapacious  rather  than  humane,  un 
scrupulous  rather  than  regardful  of  human 
rights.  To  be  really  creative,  the  power  of 
initiative  must  be  consecrated  to  projects  of 
permanency,  plans  for  the  distant  future,  in 
stitutions  making  for  personal  welfare. 

Nor  is  efficiency  always  friendly  to  ideals. 
To  be  able  to  accomplish  results  as  well  as 
to  initiate  plans,  to  standardize  effort  in  such 
accomplishment,  to  reduce  waste  to  a  mini 
mum,  is  just  now  one  of  the  great  slogans 
of  progress.  We  live  in  the  midst  of  ma 
chine-made  wealth  and  we  naturally  esti 
mate  humanity  by  the  standards  of  a  ma 
chine.  Avocations  as  distinct  from  vocations 
seem  unworthy  of  practical  minds.  Culture 
most  men  leave  to  their  wives  or  to  persons 
whom  they  can  hire  to  lecture  or  write  books. 
We  have  banished  the  study  of  the  classics 
until  the  student  of  Greek  is  getting  to  be  as 
rare  as  the  student  of  Hebrew.  The  "movie" 
has  reduced  acting  to  obeying  directions 
shouted  through  a  director's  megaphone. 
Classical  drama  is  played  by  those  who  can 


184          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

replenish  their  income  by  portraying  the 
eternal  triangle.  The  best-paid  class  of  lit 
erary  workers  to-day  is  undoubtedly  the  ad 
vertisement  writers. 

I  am  not  belittling  efficiency.  I  suppose 
all  academic  people  have  a  suppressed  envy 
of  men  of  affairs,  but  efficiency  undirected 
by  the  thought  of  service  to  human  welfare 
becomes  a  veritable  tyrant  of  materialism. 
We  fought  a  war  to  protect  a  democracy 
from  efficiency- worship.  We  certainly  must 
not  blind  ourselves  to  the  belief  that  a  power 
to  do  things  is  an  end  in  itself.  The  true  end 
of  efficiency  is  doing  things  of  value  to  the 
human  spirit.  I  know  of  few  more  pathetic 
representatives  of  success  than  men  who  can 
talk  of  nothing  except  business  and  mar 
kets.  If  we  are  to  become  merely  an  efficient 
nation,  we  shall  be  a  pitiful  nation.  For  what 
shall  it  profit  a  nation  to  gain  the  entire  gold 
supply  of  the  world  and  furnish  the  raw  ma 
terials  for  civilization  if  it  shall  lose  its  own 
soul?  Men  used  to  portray  hell  as  a  place 
where  men  burned  forever.  It  might  also  be 
described  as  a  place  where  men,  regardless 
of  the  true  value  of  personality,  everlastingly 
seek  to  become  more  efficient, 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          185 

Closely  allied  to  the  worship  of  efficiency 
is  the  elevation  of  wealth  to  the  practical  end 
of  activity  and  the  standard  of  success. 
Though  it  is  conventional  to  lament  money- 
getting,  I  would  not  appear  to  join  the 
chorus  of  those  who  indiscriminately  con 
demn  wealth.  There  is  a  struggle  for  wealth 
which  does  not  debilitate  moral  health.  Our 
country  abounds  in  men  who,  without  injur 
ing  others,  because  of  foresight,  power  of 
organization,  and  self-denial  have  accumu 
lated  fortunes.  To  my  mind  it  would  be  a 
misfortune  if  such  opportunity  should  be 
closed.  Along  with  wealth  has  come  the 
means  for  culture.  Poor  peoples  have  little 
art. 

But  one  does  not  need  to  be  hypercritical 
of  social  life  to  see  that  the  dominance  of 
economic  motives  deadens  all  others.  A 
great  people  cannot  be  built  on  wealth  alone, 
or  even  upon  the  ambition,  energy,  and  op 
timism  which  the  opportunity  to  get  wealth 
evokes.  A  rich  nation  may  become  a  heart 
less,  selfish  nation,  unwilling  to  mingle  in 
the  struggle  for  human  betterment,  building 
itself  a  house  by  the  side  of  some  interna 
tional  road  and  watching  the  struggling  peo- 


186          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

pies  pass  by.  The  views  of  the  financier  in 
politics  are  too  seldom  marked  by  a  zeal  for 
generosity  and  helpfulness.  Charity  is  not 
identical  with  justice.  The  search  for  wealth 
too  often  breeds  indifference  to  human  wel 
fare,  an  estimate  of  men  and  women  as  mere 
economic  factors  in  social  life,  a  fear  of  so 
cial  change,  a  struggle  for  control  over 
others. 

In  none  of  these  characteristics  of  Amer 
icans  does  Americanism  as  an  ideal  lie. 

II 

Americanization  is  the  process  of  develop 
ing  attitudes  in  individuals.  It  is  more  than 
teaching  people  to  speak  English,  important 
as  that  may  be.  It  is  more  important  even 
than  giving  them  citizenship.  That  too  is 
important,  but  to  dilute  our  citizenship  with 
men  and  women  who  are  not  truly  in  sym 
pathy  with  our  ideals  of  government  is  a 
questionable  policy.  A  democracy  like  ours 
cannot  be  composed  of  ill-disposed  or  unin 
telligent  persons.  A  selective  process  is  im 
perative.  The  tests  made  by  the  govern 
ment  during  the  Great  War  show  an  alarm 
ingly  large  number  of  citizens  who  are  pos- 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         187 

sessed  of  inferior  minds.  Even  if  these 
tests  fail  to  disclose  the  possibility  of  im 
proving  such  minds,  they  make  it  evident 
that  any  increased  proportion  of  inferior  hu 
man  material  bodes  evil  for  the  republic.  An 
intelligent  nation  must  have  an  intelligent 
citizenship.  The  American  people  until  re 
cently  has  drawn  from  the  most  virile  of  the 
Europeans.  It  cannot  hope  to  maintain  its 
character  if  composed  of  unintelligent 
voters. 

To  make  Americans  is  to  bring  men  and 
women  under  the  influence  of  our  institu 
tions  and  ideals,  to  instruct  them  as  to  their 
meaning.  Even  more  does  it  demand  that 
individual  citizens  become  possessed  of  an 
attitude  of  mind  which  is  sympathetic  with 
American  ideals,  and  ready  to  make  them  an 
object  of  conscious  loyalty.  Beneath  our 
general  political  ideals  lie  those  of  the  in 
dividuals  composing  the  nation.  These 
foundation  attitudes  involve  the  following 
elements,  which  have  been  the  leaven  of  the 
national  idealism  which  has  made  America 
what  it  is  and  must  be  relied  upon  to  make 
it  what  it  should  become. 

1.  Social  responsibilities  must  be  recog- 


188          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

nized  as  the  correlate  of  liberty.  The  indi 
vidual  who  looks  to  America  simply  as  a 
place  where  he  is  released  from  police  con 
trol  and  left  free  to  satisfy  his  own  desires, 
has  certainly  failed  to  grasp  the  significance 
of  our  country.  By  its  very  development 
America  has  taught  people  to  bear  one  an 
other's  burdens,  as  well  as  to  cast  off  those 
placed  on  their  shoulders  by  irresponsible 
monarchs.  The  perfect  law  of  liberty  is  co 
operation  in  the  giving  of  justice.  The  most 
imperfect  law  of  liberty  is  to  demand  that 
other  people  recognize  you  as  a  brother, 
while  to  you  brotherhood  becomes  an  oppor 
tunity  to  acquire  something  from  your 
brothers. 

2.  Law  must  be  respected  as  law  while 
at  the  same  time  subject  to  legal  change.  A 
democracy  in  which  individuals  disregard  the 
public  will  is  impossible.  Given  human  na 
ture  as  it  is,  there  must  be  some  way  of  ex 
pressing  group  authority.  To  disregard  law 
is  to  disintegrate  social  life.  No  person  who 
sets  himself  above  the  law  has  any  license  to 
live  in  a  nation  like  ours.  American  indi 
vidualism,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  not  an 
archy. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         189 

3.  The  agents  of  public  opinion  must  be 
free.    In  a  democracy  discussion  is  impera 
tive.    We  cannot  expect  the  public  press  to 
be  impartial,  even  if  such  a  miracle  were  de 
sirable.    We  ought,  however,  to  be  protected 
against  the  manipulation  of  facts  by  those 
who  have  ulterior  motives  for  such  manipu 
lation.    The  only  limits  to  be  set  upon  free 
dom  of  speech  and  the  press  should  be  the 
preaching  of  revolution  and  the  violation  of 
the  fundamental  moralities  and  decencies  of 
life. 

4.  A  respect  for  personality  as  the  final 
good  in  life  must  be  recognized  as  indispen 
sable  for  carrying  forward  social  and  eco 
nomic  adjustments.     Nothing  can  take  the 
place  of  this  attitude.     To  weaken  it  is  to 
weaken  the  whole  structure  of  our  American 
life.    A  democracy  founded  upon  economic 
processes  alone  is  doomed.    It  could  not  sur 
vive  its  own  success.    A  democracy  is  made 
of  democrats,  not  wealth. 

5.  Public  education  must  be  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  believe  in  Americanism  and  do 
not  further  ethnic  or  religious  segregation 
for  the  purpose  of  developing  an  anti-demo 
cratic  attitude  of  mind.    This  is  not  to  say 


190          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

that  there  should  be  no  parochial  schools,  but 
it  is  to  insist  that  the  nation  should  see  that 
such  schools  as  truly  as  the  public  schools  do 
not  become  disintegrating  influences  in  our 
American  life. 

6.  While  it  is  impossible  to  expect  that  an 
entire  society  shall  be  composed  of  highly 
moral  men,  religion  and  morals  must  help 
form  our  social  mind.  Such  moral  qualities 
as  we  have  seen  implied  by  the  development 
of  our  American  life  can  be  grounded  ulti 
mately  only  in  religion.  This,  of  course,  is 
not  to  say  that  the  state  is  to  be  subject  to  a 
church,  but,  rather,  to  insist  that  a  belliger 
ent,  materialistic  social  mind  promises  either 
constant  disorders,  if  not  revolution,  or  dras 
tic  control  by  the  state.  The  churches  of 
America  have  a  great  service  to  render  in 
giving  youth  its  fundamental  bent  toward 
respect  for  the  will  of  God,  immanent  in  na 
ture  and  regulative  in  society.  If  world- 
history  of  the  last  fifty  years  means  any 
thing,  an  attempt  to  transform  existing 
authorities  and  to  set  up  popular  liberty 
without  the  inhibitions  and  encouragements 
of  religious  faith,  means  disintegration  of 
public  and  private  morals.  A  turbulent 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         191 

proletariat  or  a  reactionary  bourgeoisie  is  no 
substitute  for  a  God  of  law. 

Now,  the  morality  of  a  world  centering 
about  individuals  and  that  of  a  world  center 
ing  around  classes  is  likely  to  be  very  differ 
ent.  Liberty  in  the  former  case  will  be  sub 
ject  to  an  experience  in  self -direction ;  lib 
erty  in  the  second  case  will  be  almost  in 
variably  a  rebellion  against  all  authority. 
Illustrations  of  these  principles  can  be  found 
anywhere  one  looks.  A  sincere  American 
looks  with  no  small  concern  upon  a  plea  for 
liberty  unrestrained  by  a  regard  for  morals. 
I  am  not  referring  to  that  pose  which  over 
takes  adolescent  youth  and  finds  expression 
in  a  willingness  to  cheapen  all  respect  for 
conventions.  Greenwich  Village  will  be  out 
grown  by  persons  who  really  have  in  them 
selves  any  specific  gravity  of  character. 

I  have  in  mind  a  much  more  serious  mat 
ter,  namely,  the  presence  in  our  society  of 
numbers  of  young  people  who  find  in  Amer 
ica  no  restraint  in  the  form  of  customs,  law, 
or  conventions.  To  such  young  anarchists 
parents  are  negligible  quantities  except  as 
providers  of  rooms,  food,  and  clothes,  and 
America  is  not  a  vision  or  a  common  task. 


192          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

They  are  like  barrels  which  have  lost  their 
hoops.  They  are  not  becoming  American 
ized  but  desocialized. 

Such  persons  need  to  be  taught  that 
America  is  no  social  vacuum,  that  license  is 
not  liberty,  and  that  the  lessons  which  Amer 
ica  has  learned  in  the  past  are  not  to  be  over 
looked.  We  need  to  make  an  entire  genera 
tion  feel  that  pleasure-seeking  and  wealth- 
getting,  whether  they  be  by  way  of  capital 
ism  or  by  way  of  socialism,  are  not  the  mean 
ing  of  America. 

7.  The  imperfections  of  the  present  must 
suggest  and  inspire  the  betterment  of  the 
future.  To  publish  evils  is  not  always  to 
promise  reform.  Discontent  becomes  con 
structive  only  when  it  is  joined  by  hopeful 
ness.  The  actual  then  is  seen  to  be  tem 
poral;  that  which  is  not  seen  but  which  can 
be  brought  to  pass,  becomes  the  true  reality. 
Restlessness  under  inequitable  conditions 
has  always  been  a  factor  in  Americanism. 
But  it  has  been  creative  rather  than  pessi 
mistic.  When  Americans  lose  this  resilient 
confidence  in  their  future,  America  will  have 
grown  senile. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         193 

III 

Such  ideals  as  these  cannot  exist  among 
unintelligent  democrats.  This  is  made  plain 
by  the  fact  which  has  already  appeared,  that 
America  moves  forward  by  mass  instinct  and 
feeling  rather  than  in  response  to  hereditary 
leadership.  If  this  mass  movement  is  not 
permeated  with  intelligent  morality,  if  pub 
lic  opinion  is  little  more  than  public  preju 
dice  and  passion,  it  is  quite  impossible  for 
Americans  to  carry  on  effectively  the  Amer 
ica  they  have  inherited.  Only  individuals 
of  loyal  sympathy  with  our  national  and  per 
sonal  ideals  can  carry  on  the  adventure  of 
developing  Americanism.  Such  a  develop 
ment,  it  must  needs  be  repeated,  is  more  than 
the  reproduction  of  the  past.  Relatively 
speaking,  the  constructive  elements  of  our 
past  were  homogeneous.  To-day  they  are 
drawn  from  almost  every  nation  on  the  earth. 
These  elements  are  historically  alien  to  each 
other,  surcharged  with  national  hatreds.  In 
America  they  cannot  be  destroyed.  They 
must  be  combined.  No  other  people  has 
faced  a  similar  task  since  the  days  of  the  bar 
barian  conquest  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Can 


194          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

we  hope  to  produce  a  true  Americanism  from 
these  varied  elements? 

The  process  of  carrying  forward  the  ideals 
which  we  have  had  bequeathed  us,  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  have  sprung  from  the  highest 
ranges  of  practical  experience,  is  often  de 
scribed  as  that  of  a  melting  pot.  Of  course 
figures  of  speech  are  not  to  be  taken  too  se 
riously,  but  the  presupposition  which  lies 
back  of  the  figure  of  the  melting  pot  is  one 
to  be  seriously  questioned.  If  our  sketch  of 
the  development  of  the  American  spirit  is 
correct,  it  is  obvious  that  the  very  genius  of 
our  nation  has  been  one  of  combination  and 
adjustment.  While  we  have  been  regardful 
of  the  past  we  have  always  felt  that  new  oc 
casions  teach  new  duties.  This  is  the  very 
heart  of  our  democracy.  To  maintain  in 
definitely  every  accomplishment  of  the  past 
would  mean  a  sort  of  tyranny  to  which  no 
one  of  us  would  submit.  The  process  of 
Americanization  can  much  better  be  de 
scribed,  in  the  words  of  President  Faunce, 
as  a  process  of  cross-fertilization.  Various 
national  groups  contribute  their  customs  and 
their  attitudes  to  a  process  which  would  be 
different  if  it  were  not  for  their  contribution. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         195 

Or,  to  change  the  figure,  the  American  ideals 
are  the  warp  upon  which  we  must  weave  the 
various  colored  threads  of  other  national  cul 
tures  until  we  produce  the  rich  tapestry  of 
the  future  America.  To  this  end  we  must 
give  up  the  idea  of  thinking  that  American 
ization  means  the  production  of  colonial  New 
Englanders,  Southerners,  or  Calif ornians. 
To  attempt  such  reproduction  would  be  po 
litical  and  social  atavism. 

If  this  process,  in  the  midst  of  which  we 
are  now  involved,  is  not  to  be  a  f  oreignization 
of  America  rather  than  an  Americanization 
of  foreigners,  we  must  deliberately  undertake 
to  initiate  all  our  citizens  and  prospective 
citizens  into  a  knowledge  and  understand 
ing  of  genuinely  American  institutions.  I 
have  been  surprised  and  rather  alarmed  at 
the  ignorance  which  otherwise  apparently 
intelligent  Americans  show  as  regards  our 
political  structure  and  purpose.  I  wonder 
how  many  graduates  of  our  colleges  could 
offhand  tell  the  difference  between  the  con 
ception  of  constitutional  government  in 
America  and  in  other  countries.  How  far 
do  they  understand  the  place  of  the  Consti 
tution  in  determining  the  consistent  and  yet 


196          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

cautious  expansion  of  political  experience 
into  reform  and  amendment  ?  How  many  of 
them  could  tell  the  actual  process  by  which 
the  United  States  established  inspection  of 
meats,  control  of  railroads,  the  assurance  of 
pure  food?  How  many  Americans  who  use 
the  word  "democracy"  really  think  of  it  as 
it  actually  is — a  method  of  government  in 
the  interests  of  individual  liberty  by  repre 
sentatives  of  the  sovereign  people?  If  we 
should  find  difficulty  in  answering  such  ele 
mentary  questions  as  these,  how  can  we  ex 
pect  to  develop  the  genuine  spirit  of  America 
among  those  who  come  from  countries  where 
the  class  rather  than  the  individual  is  su 
preme,  where  democracy  means  socialism, 
where  nationalism  is  regarded  as  a  capital 
istic  device  and  religion  is  held  to  be  a  scheme 
of  terror  and  reward  by  which  the  ignorant 
are  kept  content  in  economic  subjection? 
The  answer  will  lie  in  an  educational  process 
interpreted  in  its  widest  sense. 

Our  public  school  system  is  here  of  pri 
mary  importance.  That  it  can  become  a 
source  of  intelligent  appreciation  of  Amer 
ica  is  beyond  question.  But  we  have  not  yet 
clearly  seen  how  this  is  to  be  accomplished. 


AMERICAN  IDEALS          197 

Just  at  present  our  educational  experts  seem 
to  be  obsessed  with  the  idea  of  preparation 
for  vocation;  schools  are  to  be  places  where 
one  learns  how  to  make  a  living.  It  would 
be  foolish  to  overlook  the  importance  of  this 
element  in  education,  but  quite  as  important 
is  it  that  we  seize  the  opportunity  furnished 
by  the  schools  for  a  sympathetic  exposition 
of  what  America  has  done  and  what  it  is 
trying  to  do.  Nothing  is  simpler  than  to 
point  out  what  it  has  not  done.  Anyone  can 
see  the  fly  specks  on  an  old  master.  Our 
schools  should  be  conducted  the  country  over 
by  really  intelligent  teachers  rather  than,  as 
in  so  many  cases,  by  young  women  who  re 
gard  teaching  as  a  sort  of  economic  inter 
regnum  between  school  and  marriage.  Only 
thus  can  our  schools  be  of  influence  in  pre 
serving  the  real  American  ideals  and  hopes. 
To  put  educational  processes  into  the  hands 
of  those  who  are  hostile  to  American  ideals 
is  to  threaten  our  future.  Education  is  a 
public  trust.  We  would  not  make  our  teach 
ers  the  mouthpiece  of  chauvinism,  but  even 
less  can  we  permit  our  schools  to  be  indiffer 
ent  to  our  national  mission.  The  salute  to 
the  flag,  the  pledge  of  loyalty  to  the  pupils' 


198          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

country,  the  instruction  in  elementary  poli 
tics,  the  interpretation  of  our  history,  the 
insistence  upon  our  democracy  of  free  indi 
viduals,  all  are  indispensable  for  the  evoking 
of  a  proper  loyalty  to  the  nation.  How  great 
an  influence  our  educational  system  has  been 
in  the  production  of  a  healthy  Americanism 
none  can  fully  estimate.  To  disregard  its 
office  to-day  is  farthest  possible  from  our 
purpose. 

But  our  new  citizenship  has  its  own  con 
tribution  to  make  to  Americanization. 
Every  community  should  utilize  the  cultural 
elements  which  foreign  groups  furnish. 
Nothing  is  more  reprehensible  than  the  at 
titude  which  many  smug  native-born  Amer 
icans  take  toward  the  foreigners  who  have 
drifted  into  their  community.  No  one  who 
has  ever  seen  pageantry  work  of  schools  in 
the  Jewish  quarters,  who  has  listened  to  the 
music  furnished  by  Hungarians,  Italians, 
Bohemians,  and  other  European  peoples, 
can  maintain  any  arrogant  sense  of  superi 
ority  in  claiming  Anglo-Saxon  descent.  I 
have  been  in  touch  with  thousands  of  young 
men  as  they  passed  through  college,  and  I 
doubt  if  one  per  cent  could  play  a  tune  on 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         199 

the  piano,  write  a  strain  of  music,  or  enjoy  a 
symphony  concert.  It  is  no  mere  accident 
that  our  musicians  seldom  have  Anglo-Saxon 
names.  They  are  Americans,  but  they  rep 
resent  the  contribution  which  other  than  the 
Anglo-Saxon  strain  is  making  to  the  Amer 
icanization  process.  The  same  is  true  in 
other  cultural  fields. 

The  real  process  of  binding  the  various 
elements  of  American  life  together  into  a 
growing  nation  must  needs  be  spiritual  as 
well  as  political  and  economic.  We  have  al 
ready  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  our 
democracy  has  not  tended  to  develop  classes 
and  has  never  regarded  Americanism  as  in 
compatible  with  the  maintenance  of  group  in 
terests  of  varied  sorts.  It  is  therefore  a  fair 
question  as  to  how  expedient  is  indiscrimi 
nate  assault  upon  the  nationalistic  elements. 
Living  as  I  do  in  the  midst  of  these  great 
groups,  I  can  see  that  they  possess  a  common 
loyalty  and  pride  in  America  which  is  su 
perior  to  ethnic  grouping.  But  when  an  at 
tempt  is  made  to  change  a  hyphenated 
American  of  one  sort  into  a  hyphenated 
American  of  another,  a  protective  emphasis 
is  laid  upon  ethnic  feeling.  A  Bohemian 


200          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

American,  for  example,  objects  to  being  an 
Anglo-Saxon  American  as  truly  as  an  An 
glo-Saxon  American  would  object  to  be 
made  into  a  Bohemian  American.  Nor  is  it 
any  reply  to  say  that  America  historically 
is  Anglo-Saxon.  The  simple  fact  is  that 
whatever  Americanism  may  have  been  in 
1787,  at  the  present  time  it  is  not  Anglo- 
Saxon.  Our  devotion  to  the  ideals  which 
our  country  embodies  is  something  quite 
other  than  a  loyalty  to  them  as  Anglo-Saxon 
ideals.  I  am  proud  to  know  that  they  have 
back  of  them  the  experience  of  England,  but 
they  are  mine  whatever  their  origin,  because 
they  are  American. 

American  idealism  cannot  be  hyphenated. 
It  can  be  claimed  by  men  of  all  descents  be 
cause  it  is  not  the  property  of  any  strictly 
ethnic  group.  We  are  a  new  people  in  the 
making.  We  should  not  permit  the  political 
issues  of  Europe  to  determine  the  attitudes 
and  patriotism  of  ethnic  groups  in  American 
policy  and  politics. 

I  know  the  objections  raised  to  this  point 
of  view,  on  the  part  of  those  who  think  that 
no  persons  can  be  American  unless  they  are 
of  their  own  particular  type.  My  reply  to 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         201 

such  position  is  twofold.  First,  that  a  man 
who  holds  such  a  position  simply  does  not 
know  America.  He  is  provincial  and  anti- 
American.  And,  second,  our  idealism  is  a 
hope  and  not  an  accomplishment.  America 
of  the  eighteenth  century  was  a  creature  of 
hope.  The  America  west  of  the  Alleghenies 
is  still  a  creature  of  hope.  I  have  traveled 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  miles  over  the  con 
tinent.  I  have  met  all  classes  of  men  and 
women,  and  I  am  convinced  that  despite  eco 
nomic  discontent,  one  might  almost  say 
sometimes  because  of  economic  discontent, 
the  American  people  believes  it  has  a  future 
greater  and  more  significant  than  its  past. 
But  this  hopefulness  is  not  that  of  the  stock 
broker  or  of  the  banker.  It  is  that  of  men 
and  women  who  produce  the  raw  materials 
of  our  wealth.  You  cannot  understand  it  by 
listening  to  the  complaints  of  the  farmers, 
the  oration  of  the  labor  leader,  or  the  lamen 
tations  of  the  men  who  have  to  pay  surtaxes 
on  income.  You  will  find  it  as  a  great  cur 
rent  of  conviction  running  beneath  all  sur 
face  disturbances.  To  these  people  who  can 
not  forget  the  prairie  which  they  or  their 
fathers  made  into  fields,  America  means 


202          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

something  very  different  from  a  space  in 
which  to  make  a  living.  Only  when  people 
are  crowded  up  against  the  Atlantic  do  they 
seem  to  think  less  of  America's  accomplish 
ments  and  more  of  its  faults. 

IV 

Thus  far  I  have  been  speaking  as  an 
American  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  own 
America.  If  we  step  outside  the  circle  and 
look  upon  ourselves  through  the  eyes  of 
Europe  and  Asia,  would  it  be  true  that  such 
an  interpretation  of  American  spirit  and 
life  as  I  have  attempted  to  give  would  be 
found  in  other  minds?  Any  answer  to  such 
a  question  is  of  course  unreliable.  No  man, 
least  of  all  a  foreigner,  can  hope  to  speak 
as  representative  of  the  countless  millions 
who  fill  the  continents.  But  if  we  can  judge 
from  the  literature  which  is  being  published, 
and  from  the  various  approaches  which  are 
being  made  to  the  United  States,  it  would 
appear  that  two  contradictory  judgments 
are  to  be  found.  On  the  one  side  are  those 
who,  feeling  the  pressure  of  the  circum 
stances  resulting  from  the  war,  are  eager  to 
flee  to  the  United  States,  there  to  enjoy 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         203 

peace  and  prosperity.  On  the  other  hand 
are  those  who  see  in  the  United  States  the 
embodiment  of  selfishness,  isolation,  and  re 
fusal  to  assume  a  share  of  the  world's  misery. 

It  is  not  hard  to  account  for  this  double 
interpretation  of  our  national  life.  On  the 
one  side  America  does  possess  the  advan 
tages  which  the  immigrant  seeks;  on  the 
other  side  we  have  refused  to  get  under  the 
burden  of  the  world's  misery,  except  in  so 
far  as  we  have  contributed  freely  of  our  sub 
stance  for  the  relief  of  human  need.  The 
bitter  thing  in  the  latter  interpretation  is 
the  fact  that  we  have  monopolized  the  pros 
perity  of  the  world.  Unless  it  be  possibly 
Japan,  no  country  has  come  forth  so  un 
scathed  from  the  war.  We  know  little  of 
famine,  poverty,  death,  when  our  experi 
ences  are  compared  with  those  of  England 
or  France,  or  Italy,  not  to  mention  the  hid 
eous  tragedy  of  Russia  and  Armenia. 

And  yet,  as  we  look  at  Europe  and  the  de 
mands  which  it  makes  upon  the  United 
States,  it  is  hard  to  avoid  the  impression  that 
much  of  the  criticism  which  is  thrown  upon 
us  is  born  of  our  refusal  to  undertake  to  do 
things  which  the  European  nations  prefer 


204          THE  VALIDITY  OF 

to  have  us  do  rather  than  do  themselves.  We 
frankly  refuse  to  engage  in  any  political 
unity.  We  are  not  altogether  sure  of  eco 
nomic  solidarity  for  fear  lest  there  may  be 
concealed  behind  bank  balances  some  po 
litical  alliance  or  secret  treaty.  I  think  we 
shall  have  to  bear  the  criticism  both  just  and 
unjust  of  these  Europeans  who  fail  to  un 
derstand  our  actual  attitude,  and  who  are 
impatient  because  we  are  refusing  political 
fellowship.  Some  of  us  are  not  proud  of  our 
refusal  to  enter  the  League  of  Nations  but 
we  cannot  see  in  that  decision  an  utter  aban 
donment  of  our  determination  to  follow 
ideals.  Foreign  entanglements  have  always, 
and  fortunately,  been  our  bete  noir.  In  the 
long  run  it  may  prove  to  the  world's  advan 
tage  that  a  powerful  nation  has  refused  to 
underwrite  continental  bankrupts  or  assume 
mandates  over  nations  caught  between  the 
commercial  rivalries  of  Great  Britain  and 
France.  We  face  a  mighty  task  of  our  own. 
If  we  fail,  the  world  will  drink  the  very  dregs 
of  the  cup  of  sorrow. 

Far  more  serious  than  the  question  of  how 
Europe  judges  us  is  that  as  to  how  far  our 
development  can  be  continued  in  the  midst 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         205 

of  a  world  where  there  is  such  agony, 
tragedy,  and  disorder  as  we  see  in  Europe. 
It  is  idle  to  think  that  any  experience  akin 
to  that  of  American  development  will  be  fur 
nished  by  immigration.  If  our  immigrants 
came  in  any  considerable  number  from  Eng 
land,  the  outlook  would  be  different.  But 
the  immigrants  whom  we  are  to  receive  will 
come  from  oppressed  peoples  without  ex 
perience  in  self-government,  and  whose  ig 
norance  of  our  American  life,  fashions,  and 
institutions  will  increase  our  problems. 
New  elements  of  discontent  will  spring 
from  the  disappointment  men  feel  when 
they  find  the  nation  they  have  idealized  into 
an  impossible  heaven,  is  a  place  where  men 
must  earn  their  living,  and  where  economic 
conditions  have  not  yet  found  full  self -regu 
lation.  But  such  problems  are  calls  to  action 
rather  than  complaints.  We  must  be  strong 
if  we  are  to  help  the  world.  And  we  must 
help  because  we  are  strong. 

V 

The  magnitude  of  this  responsibility 
which  we  face  as  a  nation  should  appeal  par 
ticularly  to  students  in  college.  There,  if 


206         THE  VALIDITY  OF 

anywhere,  should  be  found  men  and  women 
who  have  an  intelligent  grasp  of  the  real 
meaning  of  America.  No  class  more  thor 
oughly  enjoys  the  advantages  of  our  social 
order  than  do  college  students.  They  should 
go  out  by  the  hundreds  of  thousands  into  our 
national  life  with  the  distinct  ambition  to 
carry  on  the  work  of  the  fathers. 

It  is,  I  fear,  too  much  to  expect  that  all 
these  hundreds  of  thousands  of  young  per 
sons  will  devote  themselves  with  any  passion 
to  national  development.  But  there  will  al 
ways  be  a  vicarious  tenth  distributed  over 
our  great  land.  Theirs  above  all  others  is  the 
possibility  of  projecting  our  national  ideals 
into  the  reconstructive  efforts  in  which  we 
are  engaged.  If  college  graduates  fail  to 
heed  the  call  of  this  supreme  moment  in 
civilization  to  devote  themselves  whole 
heartedly  to  the  spread  of  justice,  the  main 
tenance  of  personal  liberty,  the  extension  of 
democracy  in  accordance  with  the  great  prin 
ciples  contained  in  our  Constitution ;  if  they 
fail  to  realize  the  responsibility  America 
already  faces  in  international  affairs;  we 
may  well  despair  of  our  country.  But  if 
they  in  any  considerable  number  devote 


AMERICAN  IDEALS         207 

themselves  to  the  highest  type  of  citizenship 
and  refuse  to  coarsen  their  patriotism,  our 
nation  may  have  a  large  share  in  one  of  the 
great  creative  epochs  of  history. 

We  of  the  older  generation  are  bequeath 
ing  youth  a  country  in  which  we  have  tried 
to  express  our  noblest  hopes.  We  pass  it 
over  proudly  as  a  heritage  which,  with  all  its 
imperfections  and  its  inequities,  is  one  which 
no  generation  should  be  ashamed  to  accept. 

The  next  quarter  of  a  century  will  see  our 
nation  pivotal  in  world  history.  Already 
it  is  becoming  perhaps  the  greatest  factor 
in  the  hopes  of  the  world.  To  be  loyal  to  its 
history  as  it  extends  into  new  conditions,  to 
respect  its  institutions,  its  laws,  and,  above 
all,  to  cherish  its  great  ideals  of  liberty,  per 
sonality,  and  democracy  is  to  insure  that  the 
America  of  to-morrow  will  serve  its  day  as 
the  America  of  the  past  has  served  the  past 
and  is  serving  the  present.  And  our  service 
will  be  that  demanded  by  a  world  that  has 
all  but  lost  its  hopes  and  faiths — the  mainte 
nance  of  our  idealism  at  home  and  the  con 
secration  of  our  resources  and  experience  to 
the  furthering  of  justice  and  well  being 
throughout  the  world. 


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